


Sight for Sore Eyes

by whatsanapocalae



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind Character, Body Horror, Body Modification, Boss Fight, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eye Trauma, Pain, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-09-02 11:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16785760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: Written for Chibi--raiden on tumblr of their good goop boy, Iris. Here's my take on Sebastian and his first meeting.





	1. Chapter 1

He had his gun out, raised, and he was ready to use it. After all this time, he’d learned that there was no chance that he’d get through to the madman, that he would just tell Sebastian where Lily was. He didn’t know where they were, but there were photos all of the place, the images on them flickering, most of them eyes, and he was sure that had to do more with Stefano’s own issues than the idea that the images were looking at him.  
Slowly, Stefano turned, looking Sebastian over as if he weren’t a threat in the least. Perhaps he wasn’t. It didn’t matter, he was still going to try. He had to try. He had to find Lily.  
“You’re beginning to bore me,” Stefano grimaced, drawing his weapons of choice, the camera and the knife. “Your death will be art,” A flash of blue and Stefano was gone. “it’s time to put a signature on it.”

===

Bait. He was baiting him. The man was weak, he didn’t know anything, he didn’t know what art was, what beauty was. He was persistent though and he was interesting and he was beautiful in his own way. He was also, terribly afraid and that fear was what made him so compelling. He wanted to make art, wanted to create something amazing with the intruders skin.  
He remembered too much though, he remembered his own fear, his own pain, everything that had occurred when he had lost himself, when he had become art. The man wouldn’t understand, as he was torn apart, that he was becoming something better.  
He didn’t know if he was better, if he was beautiful, if he was art. Stefano wouldn’t look at him, he hadn’t seen himself. He had made him so so angry. Now he was here though, and he would make Stefano proud. He may have destroyed what Stefano had worked so hard to create, but he would show that he wasn’t a mistake, that he was worthy of the gifts that Stefano had given him, that the agony his body had gone through wasn’t wasted. He could do this. 

===

Sebastian turned, one way and the next, trying to find Stefano, finding walls and images in his path, then he could hear the squeak of fine leather shoes against hardwood as Stefano rushed him. Sebastian turned, fired, and missed, and Stefano dug that knife into Sebastian’s chest, “You’re going to have to do better than that!”  
Another flash of blue and he was gone once more.  
Sebastian was going to have to be faster, be smarter. He put his gun away, pulled out the crossbow instead. He started to run, setting up his own explosive traps, listening to the sound of rushing air that came with each of Stefano’s teleportations.  
“Stop running!” he heard Stefano complain and he darted behind one of the walls, seeing a box of blue form in the space he’d just left. 

===

Now, now, now! He darted out, made himself known. The man was doing something, wasting ammunition, wasting time. He had a chance to make Stefano proud, to do what he was made for. He was going to make art.  
For a moment the world was bright and real and the next it was inverted, all of the colors dark and his target a bright patch among it. He could see the yellow of Stefano’s suit out of the corner of his eye, the orange of the smoke that surrounded him. He was holding back. Stefano was giving him this chance, seeing what he would do.  
He rushed forward, ready to slash and stab the man that had followed his master. 

===

He set up another trap and then paused, seeing Stefano in front of him. He twisted on his heel and ran in another direction, hearing him chase behind. There was something wrong with him, more than his twisted art and his disgusting passion. There was something wrong with Stefano’s face, more than the strange blue eye. “You can’t avoid me!” he said, but Sebastian didn’t see his mouth move when he spoke.  
Another flash and Stefano was in front of him and he must have been imagining it. Stefano swiped up with the knife and Sebastian dodged but he was too slow from the injury he’d already taken, the blade slicing up through his chest, just more than a graze, and Stefano laughed and vanished. 

===

He’d run away. He was a coward, but that was good. His fear was supposed to be intoxicating, it was supposed to be the inspiration for their work. It wasn’t. It made him feel ill, to see. It made him remember his own fears. He didn’t understand why it was supposedly beautiful, how Stefano’s art worked. He knew it was art and he knew it was fantastic, but he didn’t know why.  
He could hear Stefano succeed in hitting his mark and he smiled, knowing that he had made that possible. He hadn’t hurt the man himself, but he had allowed Stefano a moment to step in, to create that green glory. 

===

He switched to the shotgun. He had enough traps, all of them were set, and, while they were in a maze of a large enough room, it seemed that they would be fighting the most at close quarters. He had to be ready.  
He threw himself around another corner and fired, watching Stefano fall back, finally hitting him. His stepping back was enough to make him fall through one of the traps that Sebastian had placed and it went off in a burst of shrapnel, nails, and smoke. Stefano made a pained noise, but it was quiet, subdued, not the kind of sound that Sebastian would have expected. 

===

A burst of pain, so much of it, flaring up in front of him, tearing through the suit and his skin and the clay and everything, all of the way down into the metal frame. He fell back, a few steps, and felt fire at his back and he screamed, pulling away from it, the agony and the terror rippling through him. He couldn’t take it, not the heat, he couldn’t allow more of himself to melt, to be destroyed. He would be a disappointment then. He was already such a disappointment. He hadn’t even landed a hit on the man yet.  
He watched Stefano, how he moved. He was so graceful. He was such an artist. He didn’t even know what that was until he met him. He’d always wanted to know. Music was the most he had known and Stefano moved as if he was music. 

===

He heard another flash behind him, turned, but it was too late, Stefano was upon him, shoving the knife into him, over and over again, blinding him with the spray of blood and agony. “Philistine!” Stefano growled at him as he shoved the blade in to the hilt, then teleported away, taking the blade with him.  
Sebastian wasn’t doing well, he knew that, and he had expected to do poorly, but that his stubbornness would see him through. He shoved a syringe into his thigh and plunged the fluid in, feeling the wounds stitch themselves up. It wasn’t enough to get him to full, but it was close.  
The flash was tilted, if that made any sense, and Stefano was rushing him again, though Sebastian couldn’t see his face, and he looked much more injured than he had just a few moments before, when he’d been stabbing Sebastian so many times. He wondered if he was doing more damage than he thought. 

===

He would do better. He had to do better. The man was looking at him so strangely and he knew, he knew, he knew, that he wasn’t Stefano, that he wasn’t right. He knew that he was some sort of impostor. He knew that he was nothing close to what he was supposed to be.  
He held his knife at the ready, working through the wounds in his chest, trying to breathe through them. He would strike, he would conquer. He would make Stefano proud.  
He would make Stefano proud if it killed him. He couldn’t afford to fail. He couldn’t stand the idea of it, of being taken apart and remade, made better, made into something less clumsy, less stupid, less ugly.  
He would make Stefano proud. 

===

He fired another two shots, the first making Stefano spin and then the second getting him square in the back. He staggered a few steps and then vanished once more and Sebastian realized why the smoke looked so different. The color was all off. It wasn’t the same blue as usual, more gray, and there was a smear of red along one side.  
“What a disappointment,” he heard Stefano tut, “Still, it is entertaining to watch you fight like this. No matter, all entertainments must end, even art is temporary.”

===

Even art was temporary. Even he was temporary. It hurt, tore at his heart, tore at the fibers that held him together. The pain in his chest was matched in his back, in his arm, and he was sure that the only reason his arm was still attached was because of the metal rod in it.  
He was failing. He was nothing. He wanted to stop. He wanted to stop messing everything up. He didn’t know why he was so bad at this. He could feel himself messing up but he couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t correct for it. He just knew that he was a failure, not only in this but in everything. He couldn’t stop ruining things, couldn’t stop disappointing. He’d thought that it would be different, that he would be different, that Stefano would make him better.  
Anything times zero was still zero. Stefano could only do so much, but he couldn’t make him any better than he was. He could just make him prettier, and he’d ruined that as well. 

===

Sebastian turned, his eyes panning all of the images on the walls. He didn’t see Stefano anywhere, but that didn’t matter. He could be hidden behind a corner, for all he knew. This place was full of hiding places.  
“No more hiding!” he called out, “Come on, stop being such a coward!”  
The knife caught him in the kidney and he arched his back, fumbling with the gun, almost dropping it. Stefano’s face was over his shoulder, that long nose of his nuzzling against Sebastian’s ear. “Intoxicating, this fear of yours. I have never been given such a performance. Still, we can bring it to an even more dizzying height, no?”  
Sebastian threw the gun over his shoulder, smacking Stefano in the face with it before firing. He wasn’t sure what he’d hit but he was sure that he hit something, as Stefano fell back, cursing him.  
“You’ll pay for that!”

===

Stefano was hurt, was hurting. He had to do something about it. He had to help. He had to get there.  
He could feel the ooze filling the holes in him, shoving out the burst shots from the shotgun. It was all going too slowly. It hurt. He could hardly stand. He couldn’t help Stefano. He couldn’t do anything.  
He couldn’t do anything.  
Stefano was still going strong, wasn’t giving up. He was so strong. He was so commanding. There was no way that he could keep up. He wasn’t anything worthwhile.  
He should never of come to Stefano, had never offered himself. He had gained sight but it was hard to use and he knew that it was all wrong and that he had failed in so many ways. Stefano would have done better with someone else. Stefano would have done better alone. 

===

Sebastian didn’t care, he was running, his limp more severe from the blood spilling down his lower back, each step opening the wound like some terrible mouth. The blade was intricate to the point that it looked like it was compensating for something, but it still hurt like a bitch. He reloaded, wishing that he’d made the chamber bigger.  
There was a flash, a different one from the other two before it and he skidded to a stop. Now there were more of those squares, the ones that stopped time, but these ones held explosions, half way through detonation. They were beautiful balls of flame and he knew, without even breaking them, that if he touched them they would burst and he would feel that terrible heat. The entire battlefield was getting close to unnavigable.  
“Bleed for me,” Stefano called out, standing between two of the still frames, throwing the knife with horrifying aim. For a man with only one eye, he knew his distances, and he didn’t seem to be bothered by his lack of depth perception.  
When it cleared Stefano was stumbling, his hand covering his face. He fell to his knee, just for a Sebastian brought up the gun and fired, taking the knife in the shoulder but also hitting. The spread was big enough that, while it barely hit Stefano at all, it did burst the squares on either side of him, and the explosions burst around him, burning him from either side, hiding him among the smoke. 

===

Hit. He’d been hit.  
He rushed forward, trying to get to Stefano. He had to get to him. He should have taken that blast, he should have taken that heat. He was already ruined, already too tired and weak to fight, he should of at least been able to get in the way, to take whatever damage would befall Stefano otherwise.  
He was too slow. He could hardy move. He could feel his body falter, could feel it fall apart. He could feel the wounds he’d sustained fall open, over and over again, with every movement.  
He was a coward. He was just as frightened as the man was, the one who was supposed to be Stefano’s art. His replacement, he realized, art that didn’t give up, art that didn’t make mistake after mistake. The difference was that the man was fighting, even though he was scared, and he was hiding away. 

===

“I’ve had enough of this,” Stefano growled. Two massive tendrils came down from the ceiling, ripping through the back wall of their arena. Stefano pulled himself up and his jacket had fallen open, his clothes bloody and unkempt. He threw his arms to his sides as those tendrils tore the back wall apart, revealing that massive eye that had highlighted Stefano’s location in the first place. His face was a mass of pulsing red veins, and his hair was a mess.  
“Prepare to die!” he screamed and that eye, that massive tentacled thing, threw down its tendrils, smacking them heavily into the stage they fought on, making it crumble and break. They weren’t in the theatre, they weren’t anywhere, they were floating in some strange space of Stefano’s design. “There will be nothing left of you when I’m done.”

===

He could feel it, the change in the air, when the Oculus made itself known, when the room started to fray and falter. Everything was changing.  
Stefano was pissed.  
He went to his side, matched him. He pretended that it didn’t hurt to walk, just as Stefano did, because he could see the bullet holes, his blood a bright emerald as it fell from him. He could see the stiffness in him, the yellow smoke trailing from him in his rage. It was now or never. If he didn’t make Stefano proud now, he would either be dead or destroyed and remade, the first draft not good enough. 

===

He threw himself out of the way of another tendril, getting behind the wall, but not before he saw that something had happened to Stefano, that he’d made something happen. Because now he wasn’t swaggering after Sebastian, he was walking in tandem with an echo, and Sebastion couldn’t tell which one was real.  
One of them flashed into view and he fired at it but another flashed immediately after and he had to change his aim. He fired back and forth as they approached, twins in speed and movement and everything, all but the color of their smoke. The one with the red tinge was closest now and he dropped the shotgun to go back to his pistol, to fire three shots into his chest before the other one was upon him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and lifting him, throwing him against the wall behind him. 

===

He’d failed. Of course he’d failed. These bullets were deeper than the others and they’d ricocheted through the metal bones until they embedded themselves into the organic ones. He could hardly feel it, as he fell, as the holes filled with the ooze that he was made of, as it all started to leak out.  
He was on the table once more, the knives and the scalpels and the needles piercing him, forcing something new into his body, pulling out whatever wasn’t of any use. The pain was unbearable. He outcome was unbearable. He was stiff and screaming and pleading and wishing for death.  
Death wasn’t coming. It hadn’t come then and it wouldn’t come now. He wished it would. He wished that he could die without it being Stefano’s will. He wished that Stefano would kill him.  
He was so tired of it hurting. He was so tired of hurting those around him. He was so so tired of being deficient.

===

“You dare to destroy my work? You do not even understand what you are seeing!” Stefano growled and his blade was in Sebastian’s stomach, ripping into him over and over again as the pain fell through him like ice, his eyes wide and his mouth open, too cold to feel anything. One of his hands was on Stefano’s sleeve, trying to focus, trying not to fall to the blood loss and the stomach acid that was trying to burn through the nerve-death of the knife.  
His other hand held a gun and he raised it. He was too weak to aim, too weak to keep his hand from shaking, but he fired it all the same.  
Stefano released him, falling back. His hand was at his stomach. “No, it’s not… It’s not…” He fell, body stiffening, but, instead of landing, he burst into a plume of smoke. 

===

Gone. He was gone. He could feel it immediately. He had never been so far away from Stefano, but now he could feel an icy sensation crawling through what was left of his veins. He could feel that he had fled, that he recognized that he would lose to this man, and decided to fight again later.  
Stefano had left him behind. His throat always felt so dry but now it felt hard, like a lump of rigor mortis setting in. He wasn’t even worthy enough to drag along to wherever he was going, to be rebuilt. He wasn’t worth the flesh and clay that he was made from.  
He had been abandoned on the card floor, bleeding out. He shouldn’t have been surprised but, somehow, he was. He shouldn’t have been hurt by it but, somehow, he’d thought that Stefano cared about him more than that. He’d thought that Stefano had loved him, like he had his sister, like he had his other art pieces. He’d been so angry when the man had destroyed those other two works, he thought there would have been a modicum of that care for himself.  
He wanted to melt away. He wanted to stop existing. He had never felt so alone than then, not that he remembered, but there was a sick twist to it, in the area that had once been his stomach, that said that he had, that this was what he should have expected, that this was all that he had ever been. 

===

Sebastian took another syringe, taking the moment he had to repair himself. He could feel the acid drain from the wound, his stomach stitch itself back together, the skin repairing itself, but the wound in his back remained. He was going to need another or, at least, something stronger.  
Stefano wasn’t dead, he knew that. The large eye was drifting away, searching for its master. That meant he wasn’t there, at the very least, Sebastian was no longer in any sort of danger. That also gave him time, finally, to search for Lily. He took all of his guns and checked them but, other than his grenades he was all out.  
What he didn’t expect to find was the echo, lying on the ground, leaking out on the tile. He had his pistol still out and he raised it at the bleeding, oozing thing, because now that it wasn’t rushing him, he could see that it was something else. He didn’t want to label it as something human. It was dressed like Stefano, it looked like Stefano, except that it didn’t have blood, it just had a red fluid, not unlike what he found in the jars around this place, seeping out of it. Thin, worm-like tendrils were writhing in its wounds, reminding him of what happened when he burst through the heads of those things outside. These were in its chest though and, as he watched, they seemed to be repairing the damage that he’d caused.  
All except for the face. The face was covered in the goo, looking as if it was melting, and those tendrils did nothing to repair it. 

===

The man was looking at him, was approaching him. He could kill him. If he was lucky, he would do that. He had a gun, he had a lot of them.  
Part of him wanted to curse this man, for hurting Stefano, for driving him away. He knew that he wasn’t really to blame though, that Stefano was the one that had instigated this. The man wanted something, the same thing that had allowed Stefano to create such marvelous things, and he wouldn’t stop until he had it.  
He couldn’t blame this stranger for making Stefano leave him behind. He knew that was no one’s fault but his own. If he’d been better, they would have beaten the man and Stefano would have the materials that he needed, would have created something marvelous.  
He’d kept him from making his art. 

===

Sebastian took a few more steps, his gun firmly aimed on its face. “The fuck are you supposed to be.”  
The thing’s mouth was moving, trying to form words, but its voice was so quiet, so raspy, that Sebastian couldn’t hear them. He almost wanted to bend down to hear, but he couldn’t trust that this wasn’t all some kind of trick.  
One of its hands were moving, not for the knife that had only fallen a few inches away, but for Sebastian’s foot, inching towards him. Sebastian breathed. It didn’t seem to be hostile, not with how much pain it was in. Sebastian kicked the knife away, all the same, before getting down on one knee, draping his firing arm over his thigh.  
“Hssss...” the thing repeated, “Hss… gone…?”  
Sebastian looked around. All of the images on the wall had finally gone still. It didn’t seem like Stefano was anywhere around. “Yeah, I think he left. Why? What is he to you?”  
The thing, it had to be a person with how it spoke, tossed his head, trying to hide away behind his hair. His body was tight, hands moving to his ruined chest, and his voice was wrecked, both in its quiet rasping and in a terrible sadness. Sebastian had been left behind too, he could recognize that change in pitch. “Hss. I’m hisss… hss… art...”  
“Shit,” Sebastian ran a hand over his face, wiping down his expression and his sweat, “You don’t look like art.” 

===

He didn’t look like art. He wasn’t art. He was a canvas that had been painted on with so much care and then let to drip in the rain. He was a sculpture, ignored by time, the arms and nose cut off by invaders. He was a portrait, a magnificent self portrait, in a camera, that didn’t have the back closed enough. He was ugly, he was ruined, he was destroyed.  
He wished that he could cry; really cry. There was a horrible pain in his chest, more than just the bullet wounds, despair. He couldn’t form tears, his eyes weren’t real. He didn’t have tear ducts. Even if he did they would have run dry long before.  
This man didn’t know what art was, he knew that, he had seen how little he had appreciated Stefano’s work. He hadn’t seen the grace in Obscura, hadn’t understood the point of the pictures in the halls, hadn’t felt the intrigue of the looping deaths of those people. He shouldn’t have been hurt that someone with such poor taste didn’t see him as art.  
It did though. It hurt so terribly, and it wasn’t because he had said it. It was because it was true. He wasn’t art.  
He had been, once. He’d ruined that. He had lost everything that he had been and then, when he was perfect and wonderful, he had lost it all again to his own folly.

===

That brought forth a choked sound, like a sob, and he was bringing up his shoulders, curling to one side, even as he spasmed and cried out from the pain of it.  
“Woah, woah,” Sebastian put a hand on his shoulder, turning him back, even through he kept an arm raised to hide his already hidden face, “watch it. You’re really badly hurt.”  
He didn’t know why he was being so kind, this was something of Stefano’s, something that he’d been fighting just moments ago. He was the reason he was so badly hurt. There was something in the way that he spoke though, something in how he wasn’t doing anything now that Stefano had fled, that made Sebastian want to show him some semblance of kindness. There was also, of course, the chance that he might know something about where Lily was.  
“Why…?” he asked, the ooze on his face almost black and inky as it spilled from his face. “Why he… l leaf… me?”

===

He knew why. It was obvious. He just didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to believe any of it. This couldn’t have been happening. 

===

Sebastian put a hand on him, trying to calm him, to reassure him, something, but when his fingers touched his shoulder he jumped so terribly that Sebastian was forced to back off. “Shit, I don’t know. The guy’s messed up, that’s for sure.” He didn’t want to say that Stefano was probably just using him as a distraction, that Stefano probably didn’t expect him to survive this encounter. He couldn’t say that. This person was already so distraught, he didn’t think he could do anything more to break him.  
“Nt… gud…” was the answer that the copy had though and he was once more pulling himself to the side, curling in on himself. “Nt good nuff… Bad… bad… bad.”  
Sebastian didn’t want to admit it and he definitely didn’t want to be swayed by it, but he could feel his chest tighten as a sorrow rose up in him as well. Whatever Stefano had done to him, it had been major, more than just sculpting him, because he must have done that, must have turned him into this copy. He’d seen how Obscura was made, he couldn’t imagine that this stranger had been put through anything kinder. And there was this twisted ideology in him too, this self deprecation at having disappointed Stefano. 

===

There was too much, too much emotion, too much hate. He could feel it. Speaking about it, as poorly as he could, made it all the more real. The man that he’d been fighting, that he hadn’t even landed a hit on, was being so kind to him and he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve anything. He was falling apart. He could tell.  
There was that thing, the monster, the thing that he became when he couldn’t feel anymore, when everything terrible inside of him rose to the surface. It was something that took over. It was something that was skilled in destruction, in hurting, and it didn’t feel. He wanted that. He was tired of hurting. He was tired of feeling.  
He was so so tired. 

===

His arms started to tear apart, long lines of them pulling away to become long, sharp tentacles of ooze. Whatever he was, he was starting to become something else. That was bad, that was very bad, because, if this person was going to turn into a monster, Sebastian would have no choice but to fight it, and he was already weak and tired, low on supplies. He had a few grenades, but if this was going to be a fight like the last, he knew that wouldn’t work.  
He tried to touch him again and, this time, when his hand found the stringy hair on his head, he could feel him tighten, but not jump away. It was easier to touch him when he couldn’t see, which was odd to Sebastian, and he wanted to ask, but he knew that this wasn’t the time.  
“What’s your name?” he asked, watching as the tendrils wavered and a few of them settled back down, turning once more into the check pattern of his jacket. He was so cold, as if he were already dead.

===

His name? It was a distraction, as was the touch, the care, he didn’t want it. He wanted to be the monster. He didn’t want to feel anymore. He wanted this man to leave him alone.  
He didn’t know his name. His mind searched for it, but it couldn’t find it. He had a name though, he remembered people calling him something, while he was warm and there was life in him and he still had ideals, but he didn’t remember what it was. He didn’t remember the people either. He didn’t remember anything.  
He knew what Stefano called him. He knew what he had become. The sorrow and the pain shifted slightly, as he struggled for what came before. 

===

“Gn… is gn too...” The stranger trembled. Sebastian knew that some people didn’t remember what had happened before entering STEM but he couldn’t imagine not even remembering his name. “Ste fano… he calls me… im… I ris.”  
“Iris?” Seabstian ascertained, running his hand through his hair, not to reveal his face but to give comfort. “Iris, can you help me?”

===

No, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He had to help Stefano. He had to be good. 

===

Iris shook his head, dislodging Sebastian’s hand and making it slide through the ooze on his face. “No. No… no… You hurs… us… No app… resh ashion… fr art.”  
Sebastian chuckled at that, trying to lighten the mood at least. It was true, he’d never really understood the point of art, and Stefano’s work was about as far from art as he could even consider. “I guess that’s true. And, hey, I didn’t mean to hurt you, you know? I didn’t even know what you were. I thought you were a trick of his. And you were trying to hurt me too.”  
Iris nodded at that.  
“What I need help with, it’s really important. I don’t know where else to look and, I’m betting you know Stefano better than anyone else around here.”

===

The man, he was being kind to him. He was laughing but it wasn’t at him, he was just finding humor in the situation. He seemed sincere, even though he had been so vehemently against Stefano. He wondered if he could trust this man, if he really didn’t intend to hurt him. It was hard to think like that, while the bullet wounds were still closing up, as the bullets themselves were becoming a part of his body.  
If he helped this man, he would be hurting Stefano, that wasn’t something he wanted to do. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t work against him.  
He didn’t know Stefano either, not that well, not as well as he could. He’d tried, he really did, but he’d hidden away from him, after damaging himself. He’d spent so much time in pain, in trying to repair himself, he couldn’t pay attention. Obscura though, she knew everything. She was loved by him, she could do no wrong. 

===

“Sis… siser knows… bes,” Iris shrugged and then winced at the motion. “She’s hiss favrit… not a… dissss… dissa… dis poin men.”  
So there were more of them. Sebastian shook his head, hoping that they didn’t all have this same twisted feeling of self worth, that they weren’t all so brainwashed by Stefano’s imaginings.  
“I’m looking for a little girl, the Core.”

===

He knew about the Core. He had seen her. He had helped Stefano chase her down, helped him locate her. She had been clever and quick, resourceful. Stefano had shoved her into his arms and told him to take her to City Hall.  
She had been kind to him, oddly enough, even though he had frightened her, even though he looked the way that he did. She had asked him why he was sad. He hadn’t even realized that he was showing any emotion. She couldn’t hear his answer so he’d had to pick her up, carry her. It was probably for the best, so she couldn’t run away.  
She hadn’t lied to him. She had tried to make him feel better, but she hadn’t lied to him. He remembered how, before Stefano had returned to City Hall, she had gotten him a blanket from one of the closests, because he was so cold. He was always so cold. 

===

“Lil...” Iris offered. “Lily?”  
Sebastian nodded. Iris lowered his arm, finally, but that didn’t reveal his face at all. The ooze was starting to stiffen up, though it was still dark. Sebastian took his hand, finding it as cold as the rest of him, even through the red leather. “You know her?”  
“The… Theatre.”  
“Right,” Sebastian looked around them. There was no way out of here aside from the door that he’d come through and the theatre had just been on the other side of it before. “Do you know where in the Theatre?”  
Iris shook his head. “We… we’re not in… Theatre.”  
Sebastian didn’t think that they were. He gave Iris’ hand a light squeeze. “Do you know the way there?”  
Iris nodded. Using Sebastian’s hand for leverage he tried to pull himself up, but the wounds in his chest reopened somewhat and he cried out, the scream of his pain a mottled airy thing, before he fell back to the floor. 

===

Pain. It was hot, it was burning, it was itching. The wounds reoponed and the knives were digging through his chest, removing anything unseemly, anything not right. He was laid open and bare and he was being formed, being shaped, into something better. Something beautiful. A metamorphosis.  
He wasn’t under those bright lights, he wasn’t under Stefano’s blade. He was on the floor. With a stranger who wanted things from him, a man who had hurt him. He wanted it to end. He wanted the questions to end. He wanted the pain to end. He could see, but just barely and it was all wrong and everything he had done was a mistake.  
He wanted it to be over. He wanted to be done.  
He hoped that this man was kind, as kind as his voice made him seem. His hands were so warm and they were on him as if to give him some compassion. He wanted more. He wanted mercy. He hoped that he was kind enough to give him that. 

===

Sebastian wasn’t good at this part, at comforting people. “Is there anything I can do, to help with the pain?” he asked, watching as his body repaired itself. It was a slow process but it was much faster than a human body. Sebastian didn’t have any more syringes.  
“You cud… kill me...”  
Sebastian rolled his eyes at the melodrama but then, no, he stopped. It wasn’t some form of self deprecation. He looked down at Iris, really studied him as best he could, seeing how his chest heaved and he was hiccuping shallowly, as the ooze on his face was almost water, pooling around his head. He wanted to die. He truly wanted that. Sebastian sighed. He didn’t know what Iris had been through, he had no way of even guessing, but he knew that it couldn’t have been good.  
“I’m not going to do that,” Sebastian explained. 

===

Of course not. As broken as he was, as much of a disappointment, he still had a use. He was still necessary. He had to help this man hurt his maker. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to hurt Stefano. After all this, he knew that Stefano wasn’t the problem, he was. If the man wouldn’t give him this, this exit, this escape, he would have to do it himself.  
He could see the shine of the guns at the man’s sides. He had so many of them. He had to have a bullet special for him. It would be so easy. He could be done. 

===

Iris blubbered, his hand falling from Sebastian’s own. At first he thought that Iris was going to hide away from him again, but his hand was still close, getting closer. Part of the back of it peeled off into a tendril and it was going for his holster.  
Sebastian took a crawling step back, pivoting his body to keep the gun away from him. “No.” he ordered.  
“Hnnnnnnnng,” Iris whined, but the tendril fell back to his hand and his hand fell beck to the floor. “Plse.”  
Sebastian didn’t know what to do with that. This wasn’t a person, not really, not anymore. He didn’t know if he had ever been a real person. He couldn’t kill him though, couldn’t let him kill himself. What had he said to Joseph? Nothing good, he was sure. But he couldn’t stand the idea of this thing, this oozing pile of self hatred and damage, to harm himself further.  
“I’m going to pick you up, alright?” he offered instead, “You can lead me out of here, back to the theatre.”  
“You… dn’t… don’t want… that.”  
“Yes, I do.” Sebastian was sure, pushing one arm under Iris’ back, the other under the crook of his knees. Iris didn’t even fight him this time, didn’t flinch from his touch. He was able to get Iris up in his arms and stand with him, holding him tight against his chest. He was terribly heavy, far more than he should have been, and he hissed as the movement aggravated his wounds. “I need to find Lily.”

===

The pain was a bleeding rose blossoming in his chest, thorns ripping through him terribly. He wanted to shake, he wanted to scream. He wanted this all to be over. Soon enough he flower was wilting though and he was warm, warmer than he’d been in, since, he didn’t know. He was warm and he was bundled in warmth and that warmth was this man’s arms and his chest.  
He couldn’t do this though. He couldn’t be close like this. He’d almost lost his composure once already. He knew that he would do so again. He would become the monster and he would hurt this man, if not kill him. He didn’t want to do that.  
He didn’t know him. He wanted him dead. If he killed him, Stefano would be proud of him. If he killed him, Stefano would take him back. It would be so easy. He wouldn’t even feel bad about it.  
He tried to get closer, tried to ignore the pain. The man felt so good against him. 

===

“I… hurs you….” he gasped, clinging to Sebastian’s holster now, burying his face against Sebastian’s neck. He could feel that wet fluid pouring down his skin, soaking into his shirt, staining him.  
“Yeah, well I took care of that and I don’t think you hurt me as much as Stefano did.”  
“I will… Will hurs you… Ste fan o… asks I… I hurt you...”  
“Yeah, well I can take care of that when it comes up,” Sebastian grunted.  
He started to walk, to take Iris with him, as much as he may not have wanted it. The fact was, he needed Iris, more than he needed Juli or the rest of Mobius. They could get him intel, but it was limited. Iris knew this place, all the way through, knew how it all worked. He didn’t want to just use him, but he was prepared to do so, if it was necessary. 

===

The man wasn’t listening, he wasn’t understanding. If Stefano asked him to hurt this man, he would do it. He might do it without. He needed that validation. He needed to earn his place.  
The man didn’t sound too worried about that. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand. His mind was on Lily.  
She wouldn’t be there. He knew that. Stefano was fast and he was smart and he was creative. He was resourceful. It was that which had allowed him to track Lily so well. By the time they got back to the Theatre, none of them would be there. Obscura might, just to prove a point, to show him how unnecessary he was, but she would only be there for a moment.  
The man pushed through the door and they were outside, in a twisting hall that flickered with green lights. It was light a dark room but the pictures on the walls were all far too familiar, not negatives, not in progress, but the finished products.  
He didn’t remember Stefano photographing him. He allowed the blindness to take him over as the man carrying him forward, not wanting to see. The man wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t recognize him. He hardly recognized himself. The only reason he knew they were photos of him was because he’d been there.  
He remembered the pain in every snapshot.


	2. Chapter 2

The hallway was a twisted corridor of flesh, red and dripping, pulsing like an artery. If it weren’t so dry on the inside he would have believed that they were inside of one. They still could have been. There were only a few things that made it seem like it was traversable at all, the black and white tiles, and a series of photos on the walls. They didn’t look like Stefano’s usual work, they weren’t composed as such, they weren’t as surreal, they looked more like they were just candid shots in cheap frames. 

Sebastian didn’t have enough time to look at them, to study them seriously. Iris was in his arms and he was terribly heavy, far heavier than he had any right to be. He was curled up, his chest still healing, and his constantly dripping face was buried into Sebastian’s chest. He was shaking, trembling, slightly, and Sebastian wasn’t sure if that was from pain, sorrow, or if it was just something that Iris did. 

He had to take a break though and he slid to the floor, holding Iris close to him. Iris shifted against his chest, grumbling something, but Sebastian couldn’t catch what it was. It was just that Iris was so heavy. He wasn’t in the best of shape, even though he’d quite smoking he was still drinking, heavily, and he wasn’t running around that much after criminals when he was fired from the force. He just wasn’t in shape. 

Sitting there though, with Iris against him, he was able to see the photograph on the opposite wall. It was of a man, bound to a table, screaming, his back arched. He could see the shadow of another over him, a knife in hand, a terrible and wicked curved blade. The man’s chest had been cut open and, while there were organs spilling from it, dyed in bile and blood, they were being replaced with rebar and clay. There was no way that someone could survive that. There was no way someone would want to. 

“What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Sebastian growled. 

Iris shifted in his hold. “We… we’re not… m-movng...”

“Just a little break,” Sebastian soothed, running his hand through Iris’ hair. As long as he stayed toward the back of his head, away from his face, Iris seemed to enjoy it, it seemed to calm him. “You’re heavier than you look.”

\---

It was so good, to have someone touching him. He almost didn’t mind that they weren’t moving, that the man was just sitting there and touching him. He couldn’t remember anyone holding him like this, touching him like this. Even Stefano, regardless of what activity they had been participating in, would just hold him. It was usually that they would go through with something and then Stefano would relish in what they had created and forget about him soon after. He didn’t mind. He got to see a genius at work. 

He got to see everything that Stefano could make, whatever he could think of. He was a part of something amazing. 

He could feel the man shift beneath him, could feel it in the rippling holes in his chest, the ones that were still healing. He was looking around, was trying to see something. Iris knew where they were, even though the place didn’t have a name. He knew what the stranger was looking at. He hated it, he hated knowing. He didn’t him to know, didn’t want him to judge. He didn’t want to have to explain. 

He didn’t want to remember. 

\---

Iris sighed, “Yr look-ing...”

Sebastian slowed slightly. “What?”

“...Pishurs...”

Sebastian glanced back up at the picture across from them. He didn’t really want to look at it though. There was too much happening, too much gore, too much damage. “Yeah, I guess. You know what’s happening in them?”

Iris nodded but wouldn’t say. 

“Stefano’s sick, you know that, right? What he’s done to people, what he’s doing to people, it’s wrong, it’s abhorrent.” He could feel rage starting to build in him, hardening his voice. He could feel Iris stiffen in his arms. He didn’t deserve Sebastian’s anger. Sebastian didn’t know what he deserved, but he was so broken, so fragile, even though he wasn’t human anymore, that Sebastian felt a horrible need to protect him. “He needs to be destroyed.”

\---

No. No, he didn’t understand. He was assuming things from those images. He was trying to put things together but his information was all wrong, his perspective was skewed. Stefano had mentioned that this man didn’t appreciate his art and now Iris knew that was true. It was more than not appreciating, it was a complete denial at the beauty of Stefano’s ideas and a disgust at the good that he was doing. 

He wasn’t sick. He was intelligent and awe inspiring and most magnificent being that Iris had ever met. He had been obsessed with the concept of seeing, of being a part of Stefano’s art. He couldn’t have been wrong in that desire, could he? He didn’t want to think so. He had suffered so much, just for a chance. The man could see his suffering, knew exactly what he had gone through for such a chance. But he didn’t understand it. 

He had to explain, he had to get him to know what the point of it all was. This was why Stefano had wanted him dead. Not only had he not approved, he had destroyed some of Stefano’s work. Iris couldn’t explain it, his mouth wouldn’t work with him. He had to make the stranger appreciate it. He had to remove the agony from the images, had to get him to see that it wasn’t monstrous, that it wasn’t as much pain as he assumed that it was. It had been agony, but it had been worth it. It had to be worth it. 

He couldn’t stand the idea of it not being worth it. 

\---

“Ast… fr it...” Iris whimpered. 

“No, no one would ask for that, no one could want to ask for that,” Sebastian could feel the tension in Iris’ shoulders, could feel him trying to bury himself further into Sebastian’s chest, trying to hide more. There was no where to go though, not when he was still cradled in Sebastian’s arms, in which Sebastian wouldn’t find him. Then he realized why Iris was trying to hide and he held on tighter, feeling the rage shift but still rise as he tightened his grip on Iris. “You did. That’s you, before. Why would you ask for that? Why did you let him do that to you?”

\---

He could feel an anger burning inside of him, starting to lash out. The man was treating him like a child, just like so many others had. He knew that he was delicate, he knew that there were many things that he couldn’t do one his own, but Stefano had fixed that. Stefano had made him better. He wouldn’t have taken it back, the procedure, not for anything. Even though it had been agony, it had given him the ability to see and that was the one thing that people had treated him like he was a defenseless mewling babe for. 

He was tired of people holding his hand, of people deciding things for him. He was tired of being treated as lesser. He could do just as much as anyone else. 

And he hadn’t just let Stefano do that to him, he had done more than asked for it. He had begged him for it. He had demanded it. There was no where in this in which he was a victim. He was stronger than this man could even imagine.

\---

Iris was changing, those long tendrils peeling off of him once more, splitting off of him, not just his arms, but his back and legs as well. For a long while he didn’t say anything, he just clung to Sebastian and fell apart, the tendrils getting thicker and more menacing. Sebastian didn’t know what they were, nor what they represented, but they couldn’t have been good. 

He forced himself to calm down, to speak slowly, speak kindly. “I’m not blaming you, not for anything. I’m just trying to understand. Could you help me understand?” He ran his hand down Iris’ arm, smoothing some of the wet tendrils back against his arm, where it wriggled before lying flat against his skin. 

\---

He couldn’t, he couldn’t let it out. The man just didn’t know, didn’t understand. He was treating him like this because he was hurting, not because he was weak. He didn’t know what Iris had gone through to get to this point. He didn’t know that Stefano had saved him. 

He just had to come up with the words. There were so many of them. His throat wasn’t good at making sound, his mouth wasn’t good at forming words. He’d screamed himself too raw, had damaged himself too much. 

Perhaps he was fragile after all. 

\---

“Hard… hard to... say...” Iris admitted. “No… eyes. Blind… fr so… long… he said… he-he cud… hlp me… gf me… eyes…”

Sebastian shushed him with soft lips against his filthy scalp. It didn’t explain why he was dressed like Stefano, why he looked and held himself so much like him, but it explained some things. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Sebastian wanted to tell him that it was okay to be blind, that no one thought him any less for it, that there was no reason for him to change himself for sight, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know Iris’ reasons. He could tell that seeing was something very important for Iris, even if he couldn’t understand it, and because of that, he couldn’t say what was too far to go for it. 

\---

The man sounded like he was mourning something he didn’t even know about and Iris could feel himself sliding into it, into that grief. He wanted to express himself, wanted to make art like Stefano did, but all he held inside of him was anger and sorrow. The sorrow was winning though, at the moment. He had to be careful. If he let it take over too much, he wouldn’t be able to hold onto himself. 

He could hear something. He could feel his body changing, but the sound in the distance triggered him to respond, for his body to start to shift and change. There was no pain in this change, in his body shifted and forming what he needed. And he needed to see. 

And then he saw her. 

\---

Iris was stiff though, still, and there was a large bulge growing from his shoulder. Most of the tendrils had settled back down but not here. It was like a large bubble of black tar, tendrils growing around it and then the bubble popped, slipping open in a slow and gooey way to reveal a bright blue eye, flashing as it looked around the hall. 

“Shit,” Sebastian hissed. 

“Go...” Iris was rasping, clutching at Sebastian’s shirt as he pulled himself up against his chest, to make sure that Sebastian could hear him. “Jst. Just… run...”

Sebastian didn’t know why Iris was commanding him so until he was half way to his feet once more, finding it hard to pull himself up while carrying someone so heavy. He grunted and groaned, feeling his back protest, the muscles as well as the deep gash. Then he heard he laughing. 

“Shit!” Sebastian repeated, louder this time, and he started to move, ignoring Iris’ complaints. They were rushed and breathy and he could hardly hear them anyway and he didn’t care what they were, the first one was right. They had to move, they had to go. He had to run. 

\---

Guardian. That was what Stefano had named her. Iris had been there when the first of them was made, and she was such a sight to behold. She didn’t have any of his set backs, had no reason to hesitate or wait. This was not her though. This was one of the copies, just a secondary print of the first one. She had learned, had come to understand her place in the world, and had begun to make copies. Stefano had been so pleased by her power, her joy, he excitement. And they were needed. They had to protect him. 

That meant Stefano was nearby. 

She had no qualms about chasing them, she had ne fears and no weaknesses, she didn’t have the vulnerabilities that Iris had. She terrified him. 

\---

The woman was after them and he didn’t know how she’d found them but this must have been a place where she had free range to roam, because she had come from behind them and now she was chasing them, happy as could be. She was going to catch them too, what with Sebastian’s injuries and Iris’ weight. 

Iris pointed though and Sebastian would have missed the turn if he hadn’t. The forking hallway was more narrow than the main one and it twisted and turned. They were still moving too slowly, and it wasn’t so narrow that she couldn’t follow them, but they were doing better. 

\---

He was losing himself. He could feel it, the fear growing louder and more distant at the same time. It was like all of his emotions were taking over and he, feeling them, was getting swept aside. He tried to cling on, tried to stay there, to not get swallowed up by the darkness of his own emotions, but they were so strong. He could feel his body start to betray him. 

\---

Iris grabbed onto Sebastian suddenly, onto his neck, distracting him from their running, and wrenched his head down so that he’d have better access to his ear, so that Sebastian could hear him. 

“Leaf… leaf me… Sl… slu you… dn...”

Sebastian grit his teeth and pivoted his weight. He couldn’t keep running like this. He could feel his lungs burning, too many years of smoking making them sticky and tough. He could feel his legs aching. Iris was heavy. He was slowing Sebastian down. He wouldn’t let that stop him though. 

\---

He wasn’t listening. Why wasn’t he listening? He was slowing the man down. He was going to get them caught. If he was left behind he could change, all the way, he could fight back. He could bide the man time. 

Why wasn’t he being left behind?

\---

There was a door down the way, double doors. He situated himself to take them on with his shoulder. There were no handles at least, so he was sure that the doors would swing both ways. He shoved his way through and they were somewhere else. 

They were in a dark room, and Iris was falling apart in his arms. He was a mass of tendrils and tar, barely holding onto himself. “Cnt… cant… cnt rl it… pleesse… leaf me…”

“Just a little further,” Sebastian lied, not knowing how far they had to go. “Just, please, stay with me!”

\---

He knew where they were. He’d been here so many times. He’d been here for so many hours. There was no way to his room without going through here. It hurt, it made his skin crawl. He could remember the pain. He could remember the screams in his own ears. 

He remembered the pain, so much pain, and then he had been left. He had cried out, had fought against the bindings, but no one had responded. He had been alone for hours. He’d been left behind. It had hurt so much. 

He could feel himself dripping away. 

\---

It wasn’t quite a darkroom for, while there were the red lights and the tubs of chemicals, clotheslines of photographs and negatives drying, there were also a few tables of clay and sculpting tools. One table, under a large dental light, was hardly more than a gurney with leather cuffs. There was dried blood on it that had pooled onto the floor underneath. Sebastian put a hand around Iris’ head, making sure that he didn’t turn, didn’t see it. He was sure that he knew exactly what that table was. 

He could hear that cackling behind him. He could hardly feel Iris in his arms, it was more like holding a skeleton of metal with a dripping oozing octopus, trying to maintain human form around it, dribbling away. “Just a bit more,” he repeated. He didn’t know what was happening, what he was supposed to be doing, and he had no idea if the women behind him were more of a threat than what he carried. 

\---

He was a monster. He was going to hurt this man. This man was trying to protect him, was doing what he could to keep him safe. He didn’t want to, but he was afraid that he already trusted him. He didn’t want to do that. He held on to him as best he could. He could feel himself seeping through his own fingers. 

He had to bottle the emotions. The man’s hand was on his hand, trying to keep him from seeing. He knew where they were though, he knew what he was being shielded from. Still, he was sure that it helped. He didn’t want to see it. 

He focused on the heat of the man’s body, on his heartbeat, on the speed of his breaths. He tried not to feel. He had to keep from feeling. 

\---

He shoved through another set of doors, almost blinded by the bright light on the other side. He kept moving though, kept trying to find his way. He couldn’t stop now. He had to get them out of there. This corridor was the most narrow so far and there was debris in the center of it, making it hard to get through. At the end of it was a door, made of cast iron bars. He was going to have to get past all of those obstacles, had to climb over or shove them out of the way and he didn’t have time for that, didn’t have the mobility. 

\---

So close. They were so close. If only they could rest for a moment, he was sure that he could get a hold of himself. He didn’t want to lose himself. He didn’t want to hurt this man. 

\---

“Th… thrd… dur...” Iris’ voice was even quieter than before, his face so wet that it was almost impossible to find his mouth. It was only then though that Sebastian realized that there were doors and there were many of them. They were white against white in all of that brightness. 

“Left or right?” Sebastian asked, finding his own voice weak from how winded he was. 

\---

Too hard, talking was too hard. Everything was too hard. He was hardly human now, at all. He could feel it, the numbness, taking him over. He had to fight it, had to fight what lead to it. If they could just get there he could calm down, he could ground himself. Everything would be alright. 

He couldn’t tell him though, he couldn’t say a word. 

\---

A tendril wrapped its way around Sebastian’s right hand, leading him. There was a crash as the women destroyed part of the wall with her large saw, showering them with plaster. She laughed, enjoying herself, right behind them. Sebastian had no ammunition. He had nothing. He ran. 

The third door on the right was the only one that wasn’t completely white, it had a smear of red on it, blood, a hand print dragged to the right before dribbling down. It was a pike. He couldn’t believe it. 

He kicked the door open and hauled Iris inside, kicking it closed again behind him before leaning against it. There was a scream of frustration and then she was was throwing herself against it and he could hear her saw scrape and cut through the wall around the door, but she wasn’t getting in. She couldn’t get in. This was a real safe room, all of the way within Stefano’s own realm, and there were no threats here. 

No threats except for the one that was wriggling out of his arms. He tried to hold on but Iris threw himself out of Sebastian’s arms, trying to hold onto a form that was dark gray, that was tar and blood and eyes, so many pulsating and lolling blue eyes, that was thick tentacles and over-sized hands with horrible veins. It all looked as if it were spilling, sliding off of his bones, and, before Sebastian could react, he was dragging himself away, curling in on himself under a table. 

\---

His room. His safe space. The only place that he had to himself. It was here that he had retreated after hurting himself, after ruining the face that Stefano had been so kind to give him. It was here that no one else could enter. It was here that he could sleep, think, be himself, and not have to worry about the world. It was his refuge and now he had let a stranger inside of it. 

He dragged himself away, tried to get away so that the man wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t respond to him or demand anything from him. He couldn’t be looked at in this state. He couldn’t do anything in this state. He had to hide. He had to burrow. It was so hard to old on. 

He couldn’t hear Guardian outside anymore. That helped. The man wasn’t speaking either. There was the sound of music, a song that he knew but couldn’t focus on enough to remember, playing somewhere and that wasn’t normal, that wasn’t something that normally existed in this place, but it was fine. It was soothing. Soothing was good. 

He went under the table. If he’d allowed himself to fall apart, if he had become the monster, he wouldn’t have fit. As he was, he felt even smaller than he usually was, and he was able to squeeze beneath it. 

He lay there, curled in on himself, and waited. 

\---

Sebastian just fell, allowed himself to fall, into a sitting position, and rest. He didn’t know what Iris was doing, what he even was, if there was anything that he could do. He didn’t know if there was a point to it. 

He wasn’t sure if he was safe, but he was safer, and he took a moment to look around the room. There was a bench with deep red cushions and a few mismatched pillows on it, a desk with a computer, although the screen was shattered and the machinery pulled out of it like intestines, a small table with a coffee maker and a mug on it, and a workbench. There was another door in there, in which he could hear music playing from the other side. The main difference between this safe room and the rest was that the walls, all the way up to the ceiling, had deep black claw marks in them, and there was sticky black ooze splattered upon them, as if something had burst, over and over again. That and the table that Iris was currently hidden under, which had a few rolls of film on it, a pencil, some dead flowers, a rotten human hand, and a series of oddities, all of which looked like they were parts of other things before they’d been broken apart and brought here. 

“Iris?” Sebastian asked, lying down to look under the table. “Are you okay down there?”

Iris shrunk away, all of those eyes blinking at him. He didn’t answer. 

\---

No. No, he wasn’t okay. No, he didn’t want this man to look at him, to ask him anything. He didn’t want anything to do with him. He should have left Iris behind. He would have had a chance then, at finding his daughter, if there was any chance of that at all. They weren’t in the Theatre, but they were closer now. Iris knew the way. 

He pulled away further. He didn’t want to be seen like this. Like this he was disgusting. Like this he wasn’t art. He was something terrible. He was a mistake. 

He was always making mistakes, it made sense for him to become one. 

\---

Sebastian got to his feet, stumbled, and put a hand out on the wall. He would do better on the bench but, first things first, he needed a cup of coffee. It was hot, steaming, and the mug was clean, pristine, as if it had never been used. He was certain that it hadn’t. Looking at the walls around the workbench and coffee maker, there was as much ooze and damage as everywhere else. These had arrived here later, these had arrived because he needed them. He was sure that the other safe rooms didn’t even have mirrors until he’d arrived. 

He took a long drag before sighing in satisfaction, feeling the wound in his back heal over. 

“I never introduced myself, did I? I don’t think I did,” Sebastian started, unsure if Iris could hear him, if he could understand him. There was something terribly wrong with him, more than before. “My name is Sebastian; Sebastian Castellanos. I’m… I was, a detective with the Krimson City Police Department. It’s my job to help people. I want to help you. Would you allow me to do that?”

\---

Help? Iris didn’t deserve that. He didn’t need it either. He’d had enough help. The only person who could help him was Stefano and he’d ruined that. This man couldn’t help him, wouldn’t even know where to start. Iris didn’t want it, anyway. He needed it. He needed it so badly. He needed someone to make him whole again, to fix him. He didn’t need anyone else. He had to fight that weakness inside of him. 

But this man, this Sebastian, he was supposed to help. It was what he did. Iris didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he could even speak. He didn’t want to try. He was too tired. He didn’t understand. 

He didn’t know why Sebastian was introducing himself. It wasn’t like they would be traveling together after this. Sebastian had seen what he was, what he could become. He would be afraid of Iris now. He would probably try to kill him. That was fine, Iris could destroy him easily. But it was strange that he’d introduce himself, that he would speak so kindly. Iris wanted that kindness. He wanted to feel it, not only in his head but in his skin. He wanted to feel it on him. 

\---

Iris didn’t respond. Iris didn’t do much of anything. He just stayed, hidden away, under the table. 

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” Sebastian said, kneeling beside the table. There was a monster underneath, but that monster was shaking and cowering and he didn’t feel like they were any closer to Lily. “Can you tell me?”

\---

He didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t know what to ask. He couldn’t have anything wrong with him, other than what he’d ruined on his own. Stefano had made him perfect. That wasn’t something that Sebastian could help him with. 

He needed to feel. He needed to touch. 

He hated it but he needed Sebastian. 

\---

Iris still didn’t speak, did nothing really, beside extend a hand out from under the table, palm out. The hand was almost the right size, almost human in shape, but it was still mottled and wet, gray and blue and pink. It didn’t look like the hand of a man. It looked like the hand of a monster. Sebastian was slow to reach out, to lay his hand among it, but then the fingers curled and Iris was grabbing hold of him, not to drag him under, not to hurt him, though for a solid moment Sebastian thought he was, but to cling to him. Sebastian had been a life raft, many times, and he knew immediately that that’s what Iris was using him as in this moment. He was holding on, trying not to drown. Trying not to lose himself. 

\---

Warm. Sebastian was so warm. Even when he was only touching Sebastian’s hand, he could feel that warmth. There was a ring on one of his fingers, a simple gold band, and Iris shivered. He felt like this man shouldn’t be touched, shouldn’t be dirtied. There was someone out there, someone who loved him and that he loved and Iris had no business sullying him. It was an odd thought, unfounded, because Iris didn’t feel anything sexual or romantic towards Sebastian, but it was there. He felt like he wasn’t supposed to be holding his hand, like that much touch alone was trespassing. 

Sebastian had offered it willingly though and all he had done was asked for it. He decided not to question it, not to fight it. He was so tired of fighting. 

\---

Sebastian twisted and sat, getting more comfortable. Iris wasn’t giving anything for him to go by, so he had to assume that talking was alright. So he talked. He asked Iris questions, questions about Union, questions about himself, but never questions about what happened or about Stefano. He didn’t expect an answer, not at any point, and Iris did not give any. He kept his voice low and calm, trying to be supportive, patient. He could feel his patience wearing thin though. 

Iris’ hand was going back to normal though, and it was almost completely red and leathery, the gloves taking their place as if they had just seeped under the rest, when there was a knock on the door. It was different from the knocking earlier, the violent women trying to break their way inside. This was just a gentle knock, three reps on the door. Still, it was enough for Iris to pull his hand back under the table, and Sebastian wondered how much of their progress had been lost in those three sounds. 

\---

Stefano! He had to go, he had to open the door. He had to let Stefano in. He’d never let Stefano in before but then, Stefano had never knocked on the door before. He was all better, aside from his face. He wasn’t too much of a disappointment if he was whole. 

He started to pull himself out from under the table. Stefano would be proud of him, having Sebastian here. He doubted he had made enough of an impression, that he hadn’t taught Sebastian how to appreciate the art, but Stefano could take over from here. 

He had to let him know that he was alive, he had to let him know that he had Sebastian. He was being good. He had done so well. Perhaps he wouldn’t be punished for this. He had to hope. 

\---

Iris was pulling himself out from under the table though and he looked as normal as he could, dusting himself off before heading towards the door. He did so in a daze, a practiced motion. He was going to let whatever was out there in. 

Sebastian grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him back. 

“Don’t.” he ordered. 

Iris wouldn’t look at him. Sebastian had no idea how Iris could see, if Iris could see, with all of that ooze in place of his eyes. “Stf…. no...”

Sebastian brought them closer to one another, sweeping some of Iris’ hair behind his ear. He shook and let the hair fall back in place. “Could be, but we don’t want him finding us, do we? He’s the one who took my daughter, who hurt you, who made us fight. I don’t want him hurting you again. And I need to find Lily.”

\---

Iris didn’t understand. There were two different things in his mind, battling, and there was no way that he could keep them straight, that he could do something in between. They wouldn’t mesh. He had to help Stefano, he had to make him proud. But he had to help Sebastian, he had to keep him safe. He didn’t know what to do. 

Iris nodded. “Bu… But he’s… he’...s… M his...” He couldn’t explain it. He hated his mouth, but he knew that his brain couldn’t explain it either. He wanted to help Sebastian. He liked Lily, he wanted them to be together again. 

Stefano would punish him though. Stefano would hurt him so terribly. He was so frightened by that, even though he knew that he would have deserved it. 

\---

“You’re not his anything,” Sebastian argued, before Iris could even get the rest of the sentence out. “You’re your own person. You owe him nothing. In fact, I’d say he owes you.”

Iris reached out and took the strap of Sebastian’s holster, using it to tug Sebastian into a more intimate position. He lay his goopy head against Sebastian’s chest and just breathed for a moment, tried to collect himself. He didn’t seem to be doing a very good job. 

“What was that, before?” Sebastian asked, “When you were under the table?”

\---

Another thing that he couldn’t understand. He didn’t know where the monster had come from, why it took him over. It seemed to come out when he felt too much, when the emotions got to be too strong. He didn’t know if it was something of Stefano’s design or his own. He had always felt like a monster though, too clumsy, hands bashing into everything that he stumbled into. He didn’t know what to do. He never knew what to do. 

\---

“Too much… too much...” Iris tried to explain, tripping over the words. “Cud fil… too much. M mons ter.”

“You’re not a monster,” Sebastian lied, because he had seen monsters, he had fought monsters, and Iris matched the physical description of one, but he was still sentient and he was still trying to do good, and that didn’t match his definition at all. “What was to much?”

“Sad… an ry… scurd. Too much... moshun… cudn.. hld… on...”

\---

He felt vulnerable. He was vulnerable. He didn’t want to give that to Sebastian. Sebastian was supposed to be his enemy. He was sure that doing this, explaining, it would hurt him at some point. 

He didn’t want to disappoint Sebastian. He didn’t know why. He just didn’t want to push him away. He didn’t want to frighten him. He wanted Sebastian to stay with him. 

He wanted Sebastian to be safe. 

\---

So that’s all that was. Sebastian couldn’t pretend that he understood, he didn’t know anyone else, hadn’t seen anyone else, change due to their emotions. Seemed that waiting it out and just talking had been the right thing to do.

“Do you think he’s gone?” Sebastian asked. 

Iris looked to the door, peering at it. Slowly though, he nodded. 

“We should go.” 

“The tre?” Iris confirmed. 

“Right.”

Sebastian went to the door, taking Iris with him. His suit and skin and scarf all seemed to be whole now, no sign that Sebastian had ever shot him. He was still clinging to Sebastian’s holster though and his footing wasn’t quite right and Sebastian knew that he had been blind but he wondered, then if Iris could see much at all. He didn’t seem to have much coordination. 

\---

It was too bright. It hurt his eyes. It was like everything was too dark, that everything had gone black, but it hurt and it made him wish he were blind once more. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know how to explain it. Stefano had said that he saw everything in negatives, like a photograph that wasn’t quite ready. He could fix it, but it took so much work. The brightness was painful anyway, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to see in it. 

\---

He opened it and peered out, one way and then the next. There was no one in the hall. Sebastian exhaled and led the way. The hall hadn’t changed but, as they walked it grew brighter with every door they passed, and Iris scooted behind Sebastian to hide his face against his back, as if the brightness hurt him. Sebastian wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Everything that Stefano had done to him was so fucked up, he was almost surprised that just plain kindness didn’t backfire. 

\---

Sebastian could see. Sebastian could lead him. He was getting through all of the obstacles, moving wheelchairs and gurneys out of their way. It was hard to move, difficult to get through, but they were doing it. 

The brightness felt warm on Iris’ back. He stayed close to Sebastian. He could hear something though, a hum of disappointment. And it was too late for him to say anything when he realized that it wasn’t Sebastian humming. 

\---

It was getting so bright that Sebastian was having a hard time seeing when a door opened up behind them. 

“Ah, so you are alive, how fascinating,” came the deep voice of the artist. 

\---

Stefano. Oh, he didn’t know what to do. Of course it was Stefano. The battle was alive inside of him. He wanted to go to him, he wanted to prove his worth. Sebastian though. He couldn’t raise a hand against him. 

\---

Sebastian spun, keeping Iris behind him, drawing one of his guns. He really should have made use of that workbench. Iris and Lily had been too much of a distraction though. He just had to hope that Stefano wouldn’t call his bluff. 

\---

Sebastian was protecting him. He was protecting him from Stefano. He knew what Iris was, he knew what their relationship was. Still, he was protecting Iris. He didn’t have to do that. 

\---

Stefano was standing there, with a small smile, fiddling with his camera. The lens had been replaced and the horrible dark veins in his skin had been smoothed over. He looked as healthy as he had before the fight. “And you’re together. Tell me, is this your way of learning to appreciate my work? Are you starting to understand my vision? Or are you attempting to corrupt it?”

Sebastian took a step back, almost tripping over Iris. He had one arm extended, trying to keep him shielded. “You’re not going to hurt him again,” Sebastian snarled. “I won’t let you.”

\---

Hurt him? Sebastian didn’t have a way of keeping Stefano from hurting him. Stefano was like a god, in this place and in Iris’ mind. A cruel god, certainly, but a god all the same. There was nothing that Sebastian could do. The fact that he was trying though, that was so terribly endearing. He didn’t want to see Sebastian killed for it, he realized, and that was something that he could do something about. 

\---

“You won’t let me?” Stefano laughed, “But you see, this is just a rough draft, he is nowhere near complete! I lost so much progress with the face, but that is no matter. It can be fixed, made better. You have not answered my question though, do you understand?”

“There’s nothing to understand! You’re insane!” 

Stefano just rolled his eye and then he stepped forward into a flash of blue. He reappeared in front of Sebastian, his knife out and at his throat. “This is quite boring, don’t you think? You acting all tough, me cutting you down in a single stroke. Tell me, what’s interesting in this? You aren’t even using your gun.”

\---

He wasn’t. Iris didn’t know why he wasn’t. He had used it well enough when they were fighting one another. He didn’t know why he wasn’t using it now. He wondered if it was for his own sake, or if Sebastian was out of ammunition. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. 

\---

Sebastian felt a harsh tug and then he was falling back, Iris taking his place as he dragged him down the hall. “All th… way.. then ri-ri-rite… git to… the par men an… don….” 

“What are you doing?” Sebastian turned, trying to get back into the fight, but Iris had his arms out, wouldn’t let Sebastian through, tentacles peeling off of his body to make more of a wall. He was buying Sebastian time. 

\---

It was hard to use both, both his human form and the monster one, but Sebastian needed to go. He had to get out of there. There was nothing that Iris could do against Stefano, but he could at least bide him some time. Time and his own body. 

Stefano looked him over and he didn’t seem impressed, not in the least. He was disappointing him. He knew that he would be. He was standing against him. Stefano would tear him apart for this. 

He didn’t care. Sebastian was too important. 

\---

He could hear Stefano sigh and then there was a flash of blue and he was in front of Sebastian again. “You dare to corrupt my vision? You dare to twist my work against me? You, who have no inspiration, you have no skill, you have no imagination? How dare you make such a parody?” the anger was obvious in Stefano’s face and his knife was quick and sharp. He brought it down into Sebastian’s shoulder. 

Or he would have, if a thick black tendril hadn’t wrapped around his wrist, if Iris hadn’t been tugging on him, trying to pull him away from Sebastian. 

\---

No. No, he wasn’t going to hurt Sebastian. He didn’t want Stefano to hurt Sebastian. It was strange, how long he’d gone since allowing himself to want something for himself and right now, what he wanted, was Sebastian safe and secure, far away from there. 

He couldn’t sweat. He was made of flesh and clay and metal. There was no way to show that he was exerting himself. He felt like he was at his limit though. He could feel himself losing to his body, to his instincts. 

Stefano was going to make him into something new. 

\---

“Go!” Iris cried out, the sound of it raspy and cracked and broken, and not much of a scream at all. 

This time, Sebastian did as he was told. He ran. He knew the way. He wanted to save Iris, but he couldn’t, not like this, not now. 

\---

Stefano turned to him and yanked, forcing Iris to lose his balance. He fell forward, onto his knees, panting in a mockery of breathing, as he sucked all of the tendrils back into himself, as he tried to be human once more. He didn’t think he’d been human in a long time. 

Stefano was furious, stalking up to him, standing over him. “What a disappointment you have become!” he growled. 

Iris bowed his head. He understood. He had been expecting this. 

“Never mind all that, it looks like we’re going to have to start again, won’t we?” Stefano snarled and he was on his knees as well, right in front of Iris. “First, I’ll have to remove these, it seems you haven’t learned to appreciate what I’ve given you yet.”

Only then did Iris fight him but that was weak and halfhearted. He raised his hands to protect himself, but there was no monster, there was nothing. He just felt Stefano press the knife to his eyelids, to slide it between the tissues and the ooze, and pop the eyes from their sockets. 

He screamed, of course he did, as the pain took over, snaking through him like lightning bolts, but Sebastian was gone, he was safe, he was away. There was no one coming for him now.


	3. Chapter 3

He threw himself over a gurney and pushed a wheelchair out of the way. He could hear Stefano speaking, knew that there was something terrible happening behind him, but he had to get into the elevator. He had to go to the Theatre. He had to find Lily. 

But then there was the screaming. It was loud, sounding like a blade against a blackboard, scraping at his eardrums. He didn’t look back, he threw himself forward. He couldn’t look back. He knew that if he did, he would stop. He wanted to go back. He had to go back. 

He fell against the back of the elevator, turning and sliding into a sitting position. The gates closed behind him, locking him in. 

He could still see him, could see Stefano, kneeling in front of Iris. He could see the knife slide into Iris’ face, could see him pull out the second of Iris’ eyes. That horrible scream stretched through the space once more. Sebastian got to his knees, trying to get himself up and out, but the gate was closed tight, he couldn’t move, the light was already on and he was moving. He was trapped. There was nothing that he could do. 

“I’ll come back for you!” he screamed, hoping that Iris could hear him, could understand him, as he went down to the next floor. “Just hold on! I’ll come back!”

\---

Stefano’s hands were so warm, even through the leather, and for a moment, all he wanted to do was rest amongst them. He could feel a terrible clicking, like a clock hands moving, but like he was inside of the clock and the clock was inside of him, right in those sockets. Pain was seeping through it, like the ooze seeped out of him, overwhelming. He could feel his ruined throat open, could feel the terrible sound that was wrenched out of him. And still Stefano was touching him, holding him still, and he wanted that heat, wanted to earn the care that allowed for such touch. He had failed and, through this pain, through this punishment, he would be made worthy. 

He couldn’t see, that was the worst part, worse than the pain, worse than the disappointment. He hadn’t been good at seeing, he’d misused Stefano’s gifts, but he still needed it, had grown so accustomed to it. He sobbed at the loss of it, at feeling alone, feeling lost. 

He heard yelling, Sebastian’s voice. He tried to be quiet, tried to hear, as Sebastian promised him that he would return for him. It was pointless. There was no reason for it. Iris didn’t respond. 

He could still feel Stefano, could feel his hands grow hard as they took his elbows instead of his chin, and pull him to his feet. He was useless, he was as pathetic as he had been before coming to Stefano. He would be left behind, he would be treated like he was lesser, because he couldn’t see, just like before. 

Stefano led him, took him where he needed him to go, down the corridor. Iris didn’t know if they were going to the elevator or away from it. He heard two doors swing open though and he knew, knew exactly where he was. No matter how much he fought against it, no matter how much he begged, he knew that he wouldn’t be freed from this. He deserved this. 

He cried. 

\---

The elevator was slow and it was horribly familiar. He could hear him the entire time, could hear Iris, though the screaming was replaced with the sound of his sobs. They were quiet broken things, and Sebastian could imagine how he looked, how his shoulders would be shaking, and he wanted to go back. He didn’t have time to go back. He would, once he had Lily. He would come back.

He could see the floors as he passed. Each one of them was bloodier than the one before, more decorated with roses and red curtains. It was a menagerie of gore and ‘art’. Everything was dripping, all of it twisting Sebastian’s stomach. He’d already known that there was something wrong with Stefano but now he knew that there was no way that he was sane, that he was salvageable. He would tear Stefano apart if he could. 

Iris was up there, he was alone. He’d given Sebastian time to get out, gave him a chance to find Lily, told him where to go. And now he was suffering for it. Sebastian could still hear him so terribly clearly, regardless of how far away he was. He must be terrified. He must think that he’s alone, that, in getting Sebastian out there he had isolated himself to his suffering. And the worst part was that he was right. There was nothing that Sebastian could do. 

The elevator slowed to a stop. He wanted to go back up, wanted to help, wanted to do something, but there was no button, no way for him to go back. He had no choice but to continue forward. 

\---

Stefano lay him down on the operating table and he tried to be good, tried to lie still, but all of his instincts were telling him to escape, to pull away, to protect himself. He was already hurting, already so afraid, and just remaining himself was hard. He had to though. If he didn’t, Stefano would be so disappointed. He already was. He didn’t need to make things worse. 

“Now, what shall we do about this, hmm?” Stefano asked, his hand trailing down Iris’ front. “You have been, much less of an art piece than an experiment. I think, perhaps, it is time to make you into something more. That mind of yours, that is the problem, no?”

Iris shook his head. That hadn’t been part of the deal. They were supposed to be equals, perfect copies, once Iris had learned, after he had become accustomed to seeing and knew what art was. They were supposed to create together. But here, Stefano was speaking as if he was less than him, more a slave than a pupil. 

“P. pleeese….” Iris begged, feeling Stefano’s hands roughly take his wrists and bind them to the table at his sides before he moved onto his ankles. He didn’t want to be changed. He didn’t want to lose himself. He wasn’t supposed to lose himself. He thought Stefano was just going to fix him. 

“Now, now, don’t you worry. I’m going to form you into something luxurious, something that no one else has attempted before. You will be a masterpiece in your own right.”

\---

The gate opened and the room beyond was dark and cold. Sebastian took a step into it, seeing a flash of blue skittering away, as if he had frightened a school of fish. The moment that he left the elevator the sound was gone, Iris suddenly silent. Sebastian took a look around before he followed the corridor, seeing how the room was filled with white cloths draped over tripods and the like. He assumed that there were still cameras attached to them, but he didn’t dare to pull any free. 

He had to go to the right. That was what Iris had told him. The hall wasn’t too terribly long, and at the end of it there there was a fork. He turned right and found himself being stared at by a dozen blue eyes, all just floating in the hall. They all blinked at him, out of sink, before fluttering away, the school of fish that he’d seen before. They raced down the hall once more before scattering at the end. At the end there was another eye, just one, and it was so large that it took up the entire doorway. It shuddered, the iris of it bright blue, and when he shifted to one side or the other it followed him. 

Stefano knew where he was. There was no way that he couldn’t. He was watching him. 

He didn’t want to move forward, he didn’t want to be in the gaze of this eye. There was nowhere else for him to go. He had to find Lily. That thought pushed him forward. 

\---

Stefano was gentle with the knife, scraping away the ooze on Iris’ face, trying to find the skin underneath, what had bubbled and burst, what had melted and fallen away. Iris didn’t want him to see that, didn’t want him to know just how much he had damaged his hard work. 

That clicking grew louder, faster. He had to get out. He had to do something. He didn’t want this. 

“Such a mess,” Stefano hummed, “I thought you held more respect for me than this, I thought you actually cared about my work.”

He did. He wanted to tell him so. This was a mistake. He was good at making mistakes. He wanted to say something, anything, but his throat wouldn’t obey and all he could do was make these choked sorrowful sounds. 

“No matter, all will be fixed, and it will be far better than before,” Stefano explained, leaving his face for a moment to check on the rest of him. He could feel the rest of him, the coldness of it, leeching away, dribbling and changing. The monster was trying to come forward, to take him over. But he wasn’t possessed, he was the monster. “And what is this?”

He wanted to be the monster. He didn’t want to be afraid. He was so afraid. He just wanted to stop being afraid and hurt. He wanted that ticking to go away. He wanted to be alright. 

\---

He reached it, finding it not at the turn of the hall but the end of it. He doubted that Iris had lied to him, not when he’d been so desperate. He must have been so scared, then, with Stefano coming for them, with Sebastian leaving him behind. Sebastian bit his lip, angry at himself. He should have been there. He should have stopped Stefano. He should have done so many things differently, always should have. He shouldn’t have run. 

He made his way to the eye, that cold blue eye, which looked at him without emotion, without anything. “What am I supposed to do about you?” he asked as it blinked. This had to be some kind of puzzle, something that he had to solve in order to get past. Stefano hadn’t seemed the type to want puzzles though. 

He pressed his hand against it and the eye shut, keeping him out. The door started to rumble though, looking like it was about to open. He couldn’t get through and hold the eye shut though. He thought about shooting it, but he still didn’t have any bullets and he doubted it would work. Annoyed, he backtracked to the elevator. There was no where else for him to go. 

\---

Stefano grabbed a hold of one of the tendrils and pulled, making it stretch and go taut and Iris screamed, back arching off of the table. Stefano grabbed at it again and again, hand over hand, pulling it out of his body. It wasn’t in his body though, it was part of his body. 

He didn’t want to turn. He wanted to be good. He wanted to make Stefano proud. If he was good enough, maybe Stefano would allow him to keep a semblance of himself. He didn’t want to lose his mind. He already was though. 

When it came free, ripping from his body like elastic, the agony of the pull was replaced with the burning of an open wound and he could feel himself oozing. 

“Interesting,” Stefano said and Iris could hear him, no longer screaming but panting, “Much like the Oculus. What inspired this, I wonder?” 

Iris shook his head. He was fading away. Everything was too much. It was growing quiet though, it was getting distant. Pretty soon he would feel safe, everything would be fine. He would lose control. He didn’t want to lose control. 

Stefano’s hand, his scalpel was then on his chest, and he knew that he was growing those bulbous lights. “And these? Are these eyes?”

\---

He searched the room but there was nothing that he could use, nothing that seemed like a piece to this puzzle. But he’d been photographed by Stefano before, had seen the flash of his camera, and it had made him blink, make him freeze, at different times. He pulled down one of the sheets off. 

There was an old camera, older than the veritas that Stefano used, but it was still in working condition, still had a tall flash on it. He hoped that it would still work. He unscrewed it from the tripod and made his way back out into the hall. He didn’t round the corner though. He knew that, if he did, that eye would see what he was doing. He had to surprise it. He wasn’t sure how to surprise a giant eye though. 

After a moment of just breathing, of just trying to figure out his plan, he decided to just shove the camera out there and push the button. The light went off and then he could hear something. It was quiet and distant and the sound quality was off, as if some of the instruments were out of tune, but he could recognize the notes. 

He went into the hall. The eye was closed and, more than that, trapped in a blue box, much like the ones that Stefano controlled. The door was opening, rumbling, but it was doing so slowly. He had a lot of time to get through but, he would also be slowed by entering it. 

He braced himself and started to run, knowing he would soon be entering that strange feeling of swimming through gelatin. He slid into it, feeling the box ripple around him as Tchaikovsky swelled around him, the notes wrong but still a Serenade of Strings, beating around him. He was slow, he was cumbersome, and he could feel every part of his movement. The door wasn’t open enough yet. He had to get down, almost to a crawl, in order to get under it. And then the music was gone and so was the box and he was going too fast, his momentum carrying him to and into the railing around the stairwell. 

\---

He could feel Stefano sculpting him, taking the new shapes that his body was producing and turning them against him. He was trying to make his own art out of the mess that Iris had created with his self conscious. He could feel himself changing, in both of their visions, he could feel the stiffness in his fingers and the way that the table felt under his fingertips. He tried to focus on it. He couldn’t. 

All he could feel was a tug of war, his body burning in terrible pain and also freezing in the nirvana of nothingness. The void was rising in his chest, growing over him. He couldn’t fight it. He didn’t want to fight it. 

He wanted Stefano to stop touching him. 

\---

It jabbed him in the stomach and he fell over it, catching on and almost hurdled off. He just held onto it for a moment, breathing, feeling the hairs on his arms tingle and slowly go back in place, as if they’d been rubbed with static electricity. 

Apartment building, that’s what this was. He hadn’t known before, when he’d rushed through it, when he first entered STEM. It looked much the same as before, all white and marble. There was red though, spreading out from those figures wrapped in white, dripping from the ones that were hanging from the ceiling. If this was art, Sebastian was never going to a museum again. 

He went to the stairs. He had to get all of the way down. Wherever Lily was, she must have been terrified. She had to be in the Theatre, she had to. He was going to find her. He was going to get her out of here. And Iris. He wasn’t sure. He wanted to go back for him, he said that he would, but he didn’t know. He couldn’t take Lily back into Stefano’s reach. He hadn’t thought this through. He’d let his emotions get the best of him, again. He swore under his breath. He’d figure it out as he went along, that was the way he always did things. He made a lot of mistakes though. 

He took the steps two at a time. There were so many of them. He swore that there were more than there had been when he went up them. And at the end, there was no tile, it was just blood and rose petals. Stefano needed some variety in his work, that was certain, perhaps pillows and feathers and sunshine. Something nice. 

\---

Iris’ was gone. There was just the monster and it tore through the bindings easily, its hands too big to be contained by them anyway. He was too large for the table and he slid off of it as he threw out one of his massive hands, the claws made of flesh and of metal and of clay. He could hear someone scream in surprise and then he could hear someone try to nag him but the words made no sense. They weren’t coming from anyone important. 

He tugged his ankles free, feeling the leather straps snap. Nothing could contain him. Nothing could even try. 

\---

Sebastian tossed himself off of the last step and over towards the door, getting to it and through it and into the theatre, onto the stage. 

And the stage was all that was left. All of the bodies, all of those people, were gone, as were the chairs, as was the floor. Something had burst through, something big, and there was no where for Sebastian to go. He couldn’t get across the chasm. Part of him wanted to jump into it, but he couldn’t see the bottom. He couldn’t reach Lily. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” came a voice from above him and he jumped, pulled from his thoughts, looking up. He couldn’t see her, but she was there. Of course she was there. “Ooooooooh.”

\---

He could hear someone swear and he didn’t know what it meant and it didn’t matter. He was chasing after the sound. The sound was all there was. He couldn’t see. He was good at hearing though. 

His prey was quick though and he could hear something falling, a large crash, but it wasn’t meant for him. It didn’t even touch him. 

He paused, not of his decision and that fact filled him with hatred, with a desire to break everything, to get out. He didn’t want to pause. He wanted to move. He wanted to destroy something beautiful. 

He didn’t know what beauty was. He didn’t know what anything was. 

He felt the flash of Stefano’s camera fade and he was after him once more. 

\---

Obscura. As if his day couldn’t get any worse. He didn’t bother with aiming his gun at her, she didn’t show much fear against bullets anyway. He tracked the sound of her on the ceiling, until she came into view, her body as disturbing and twisted as it was the first time that he saw it. She was looking at him though, not attacking, and he didn’t know what to do about that. He didn’t know how to feel. 

‘Sister knows best’ that’s what Iris had said. He hadn’t seen anything else like Iris and Obscura wasn’t similar in any way, but she was another of Stefano’s creations. He wondered if she was who Iris meant. 

“Can you help me?” Sebastian called out, knowing that this was a mistake, that Obscura would sooner have him dead than anything else, that she had no reason to help him. He didn’t even think that she had ears. It was worth a try though, as much as anything else. “I’m looking for a little girl, do you know if she’s still here, in the theatre?”

\---

The man was swearing again and giving away his location. It was easy to find him. His tendrils grew and stretched, finding him and wrapping around him, squeezing. It would be so easy to pop him, just keep applying pressure. 

Biting pain in one of them, the nerve reaching all of the back into his chest, and he bellowed, all of the tendrils falling open just enough for Stefano to escape. The nerves shouldn’t have worked, he shouldn’t have been able to feel pain. He was dead. He was dead. Stefano had killed him and yet he was still walking, still feeling, still this thing.

He wanted Stefano dead. He wanted everything dead. Then it could all go quiet.

He chased after him and this time, when he got close, he could hear more things being upturned and, when he reached, they landed on top of him, pinning him under them. He writhed as he heard a door open and closed and he was left alone. 

Everything was still. 

\---

Obscura twisted and fell, landing on her feet before him. She was bigger than he’d remembered. “Ahhhhhhhhhh oh,” she groaned. That told him nothing. The tendrils of barbed wire weren’t out of her though, the were still sitting inside of her, and she was looking at him more with curiosity than a need to destroy him. 

“Okay, fine, that’s fine.” Sebastian shook his head. She wasn’t making a move to hurt him. He was going to need help finding Lily and he couldn’t understand a thing from Obscura. He needed Iris. “How about Iris then? Can you help me with him?”

“AH!” she screeched, and then the tendrils did come out and she seemed angry, not that Sebastian could tell from her blank camera. “Ah ah ah!”

Sebastian took a step back, hands raised, “No, I need your help getting to him! He’s hurt! I’m a friend of his!”

“Oh,” Obscura sounded very matter of fact there, the tentacles pausing before trailing back, “Ohhhh oooh oh.”

“Can you help me get to him? I went down the elevator and then it wouldn’t let me up again. Please. I need to help him.” Sebastian kept his hands raised. Obscura turned from him, thinking hard, before turning back. “Please. He must be so scared. He’s all alone.”

“Uhhhh oh, oooooohhhh,” Obscura replied. 

Sebastian had no idea what that meant.

\---

He was alone. That was how it was meant to be. He made his way around the space, feeling nothing and everything, wanted to destroy still, wanting to be still. He wanted to feel nothing. There was either nothing or everything and right then he was everything and that everything was just being translated to rage. 

He found the cameras and destroyed them, knocking them and their tripods away. He smashed against the table, the metal buckling under his blows. He wanted to see. He wanted to do better. He wanted to rip the walls apart. 

He wanted to escape. 

He wanted to be Iris. He didn’t want to be a monster.


	4. Chapter 4

Obscura was fast, even with her three odd legs. She went back the way that Sebastian had come and he chased after her, doing everything that he could to not be left behind. Stefano hadn’t made her with running in mind and she toppled oddly, whooping as she crashed into one wall and then another. Her head swung wildly as she bolted towards the elevator. Instead of entering it though, she looked up above it, at the chain link that surrounded the car. 

“Ah! Eeeeeeh Ahhhh!” She groaned and, if she’d been able to Sebastian thought she would have been glaring at it. He slowed at her side, panting, as those long lines of barbed wire pulled out from her back, like tentacles, like Iris’ tendrils. She slapped them against the chain link, but it wasn’t strong enough to break through. “Uh ah! AH!” 

Sebastian hesitated before putting his hand on her flank and the massive camera of her face swiveled, his own face reflected back at him. She could kill him. She’d tried before. He could still feel how the barbs had cut into him, the ones that were now worked on the fence. She was waiting for something, for some idea. She didn’t seem to be much of a thinker of her own. 

\---

He couldn’t get through. He didn’t know where the doors were and the walls were too thick and he was trapped. He was caged. He threw his tendrils out, trying to break through, to find the way out. He wanted out. He would get out. He would break the walls to pieces if he had to. There was no cage that could hold him. 

He stomped through broken glass, over blades and saws and shrapnel, things that were supposed to get inside of him, things that he wanted to keep out. Things that couldn’t hurt him as he was. He felt them slice his feet but he did not care, he did not think of it. The pain was no more than a poke and he was already seeing galaxies. It didn’t even hinder him. 

There was no response when he slammed into things, whatever had been in here with him had fled. There was nothing that he could tear apart. He wanted to tear something apart. 

\---

“Can you get me up there?” he asked, “I could get that open.”

She lowered her head, exposing the accordion of her neck. He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know why he was trusting her all of a sudden. She was a creation of Stefano’s and she had tried to stop him twice. More than that, she seemed to be more animal than human, as if whatever sentience she had had been scraped away. She wasn’t attacking him now though, she was trying to help him save Iris. They may have been enemies, but they had the same goal. He had to hope that was enough for them to trust one another. 

When he didn’t move she hooked her fingers together and lowered her arms, making a step for him. He sighed and put his foot in it, only to scramble on her neck as she lifted, too soon and too fast. He thought he was going to fall. But he grabbed her roughly and pulled himself up and over, until he was straddling her neck. 

“Uuuuuuhhhhh,” she said. She straightened out, both her neck and the rest of her. Sebastian clung to her rising further, closer to the fence. He wasn’t afraid of heights, he never had been, he’d never had that urge to just jump, but he was on the neck of a creature that could easily kill him. 

She brought him as close to the fence as she could. 

\---

He spread out and kept spreading. He covered the walls in his ooze, in the tendrils that peeled off of him like a second skin, like glue that had dried on his flesh. He mapped it all out, where the shelves had fallen, where the counters were, where his own blood had pooled and dried onto the table. He moved through it, still blind but now knowing the layout. He hadn’t found the doors. There was something in the way. 

He opened the hole in his face, where a mouth should have been, but there was no air to exhale. He was alone. He had been abandoned once more. There was no one coming for him. More than that, this was what he had deserved. Being left behind, hurting, it was what always happened. 

He was calming down. He could feel himself start to shrink. The anger was fading. There was that sorrow, which was always present, taking over his thoughts once more. He could stop being a monster. He could go back to being himself. 

They didn’t deserve him. 

\---

He drew his knife and got to work, getting some of the chain caught in the serration of the knife and tore through it. It was bad for the knife, dulling it, and it was slow work, but he didn’t care. He had to get through. He could climb up the chain link, on the other side, there were easy handholds, and he could jam his feet into the gaps. He could get up there, panting and sweating, drag himself up there, so slowly, that whatever was happening to Iris would long be over and there would be nothing to save. 

“Ohhhhhh,” Obscura cooed, pushing her head in through the gap, getting Sebastian even closer. He’d seen her walk, the impossibility of it, how she could stand on the ceiling as easily as she could the ground. He shuddered. It reminded him of that long haired thing, that twisted abomination that had once been Laura Victoriano, the way that she could move like a spider, especially in a place like this. 

“We’re almost through,” he explained, cutting downward. He didn’t need to make it wide enough for himself, he had to make it wide enough for her. She could get him up there so much faster than he could ever hope to do on his own. 

He never thought he would come to rely on a monster to save another monster. 

He never thought he’d want to. 

He bent the metal down and they were through, Obscura whooping as she pushed herself in through the gap, acting as if she was unburdened by Sebastian’s presence. He had to duck to keep from getting cut on the jagged edges but Obscura didn’t care when they scratched up her pink and fleshy body. She didn’t even bleed. She hadn’t even when Sebastian had shot her. 

\---

His ears pricked. He couldn’t hear Stefano anywhere but he could hear something else, a moaning, a groaning thing. For a moment it was calming as much as it shouldn’t have been, as he remembered things in the slow part of his brain that was starting to flex, to wake up, to take over. Obscura, walking like a newborn fawn, while he watched from the shadows, into Stefano’s arms. He had been so patient with her, not in her creation but in her development. He had been patient with Iris too, had taught him how to see, how to use the camera, how to create art. But that patience had left, failure after failure turning Stefano away from Iris. 

Obscura was so much more, so much better, far more deserving of Stefano’s care. He hated her. He’d always hated her. She was perfect and beautiful and so much more than he could ever be. He tore plaster from the walls. He wanted to scream but he had no sound. He wanted to destroy her. She was everything that he was meant to be. He was a failure. He was wrong. He was a mistake. She was what Stefano wanted. 

He didn’t know why he couldn’t be more like her. He didn’t know what had gone wrong. It couldn’t have been the artist. It had to be the materials. 

He grabbed the table of his creation in both of his hands and he squeezed until the metal groaned loud enough to drown her out, twisted and broke in his hold. He was stronger than she was. That alone gave him an advantage. 

\---

She didn’t need handholds, she was able to walk along the fence, just as he’d suspected, but he was still bound by the laws of gravity. He immediately started to slip and he clung to her, knowing that if he fell he would never be able to help Iris again. Her hands were on him fast enough, thin and small, almost the hands of a child. He didn’t want to think about that, but they were strong enough as they kept him firmly against her. 

They moved quickly and skittered, Obscura not bothering to stay on one side of the wall, but scooting from one to the next. She stayed mostly quiet but would suddenly moan as she moved. Sebastian could feel her rumbling as she did so, though he didn’t know where the sound came from. She didn’t have a mouth. 

Now, when they passed those floors, there was nothing on them. The blood the entrails, they were clean. A few of them had flickering lights, but more of them were just dark, as if they’d been abandoned for years. Sebastian didn’t know what it meant. It made him feel cold though, wonder if Stefano was anywhere nearby. 

He couldn’t hear Iris when they got to the right floor. Sebastian half dropped off of Obscura and then onto his knees, dizzy and nauseated, not realizing how her constant turning had affected him. 

“Ah!” she called out and ran off without him. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. She knew where they were going better than Sebastian did. 

\---

Close. That sound was so close now. He could get to her, if only he wasn’t caged. His tendrils sharpened, slick ooze sliding down them. He would tear her to pieces. He would ruin everything beautiful that was in this world until he was all that was left. Then, perhaps, he would be worthwhile. There would be nothing to compare him to. He would be the successor. He would be the standard that everything would be compared to. 

He knew that he couldn’t be the best art that Stefano had made, that he would not make him proud in this, but he would never be changed either. He would be too strong, too powerful, for Stefano to control. He didn’t think he would be able to control Stefano in return, but the concept channeled his rage. He could be his own master at the very least. 

He didn’t have to go back. He could stay like this. Like this, the anger consuming him, he was unstoppable. He didn’t have to listen to what anyone said. He didn’t have to be small and weak and so very dependent. 

\---

He had his hands on his knees as he tried to ground himself. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. It helped settle his stomach. It always did, on the nights when his body remembered to fight the amount of whiskey he’d had. 

There was a loud thud and a moan and another thud. He pulled himself to his feet. He couldn’t waste time. He was shaky and the first step made him stumble, but he had already wasted too much time. He had to get to Iris. He had to help him. 

\---

He slammed against the wall, through the shelves. She was there. He could hear her. She was throwing herself against the door, trying to get in, not knowing that she was speeding towards her death. 

He was going to rip into her. His tendrils were like long blades. There was nothing that she could do against him. 

\---

“Ah! AH! AHH!” Obscura complained and she was racing back to Sebastian. She looked at him a moment before complained some more, “Ah! Oh oh, Ahhh!”

“Lead the way,” he offered, hoping that was an answer that she would accept. He had no idea what she wanted. 

“Ooooooh,” she moaned and rolled the camera as if she were rolling her eyes. 

\---

There was another voice. It made words. He couldn’t understand them, not at this distance, not with how the anger was so loud in him. That didn’t matter. He could destroy them both. No human could pose a threat to him. They were weak, they were tiny. He would heal from whatever damage they tried to do to him. He wouldn’t even feel it. 

And when they were dead, he would be able to free himself of this place and nothing would stop him again. 

\---

She did lead him though, not so quickly as before, and he wasn’t at all surprised as to where she was taking him. It was the room that they had gone through before, the dark room, where Iris had been hurt so terribly before. Obscura groaned at the door before throwing herself against it, though it hardly moved at all. Then she looked at Sebastian, because he must have had some answer to the door not opening. 

He took hold of the handle and slowly opened it, pulling instead of pushing. There was a shelving unit, knocked on its side, bottles of chemicals shattered beneath it, all formaldehyde and photo processing fluids. It reeked and, more importantly, it was a barricade that wasn’t there before. He reached down, trying to get a handhold to lift it up, but then a projectile, slid through it, fast and hard, sliding through Sebastian’s arm like a needle. 

\---

There! He withdrew the long weapon of his body, feeling the ooze heat and mix with the blood of whoever was on the other side of the barricade. He had done damage. The heat felt good, the progress felt better. They had finally arrived. He would beat them down. 

He sharpened more of himself. He was going to break through. He would cut them into tiny pieces. 

\---

“Ahh!” Obscura screamed, grabbing a hold of Sebastian with her barbed appendages and yanking him away. 

It was so fast, he had hardly felt it, but now there was blood pouring down his arm from the new wound and it was throbbing and stinging. He could see that thing on the other side though, all of those bright blue eyes searching and staring, blinking oddly, as they tried to find him. The tendrils with thin like blades of grass but wiry and sharp and they slid through shelves, searching for him. Even with all of those eyes, Sebastian realized that Iris, or the monster that he’d become, was completely blind, searching but unseeing, lashing out at whatever was out there. He was also, a great deal larger than Sebastian had last seen him, even in a form like this. 

\---

He poured himself towards them, towards the sounds, all of his tendrils that weren’t still attached to the walls a mass of daggers. Most of them hit the barricade, bounced off, but many of them, so many, went through, flying straight and true. He felt them pierce deep into something but that heat wasn’t there, that joyous blood didn’t coat him. He withdrew, confused, at the cold sensation. It felt like he had only stabbed through himself. There were hard parts, like the metal bones that held him together, but most of it was fleshy. 

Flesh was supposed to contain blood. He didn’t understand. He thought that he would kill them. He couldn’t have failed yet again, not this early. He would be able to try again. 

\---

“Eh?” Obscura asked, and the tendrils all went in their direction. She pulled Sebastian close, hid him behind her long neck, and took the blows without complaint. When the tendrils slid out of her the holes remained, revealing that she was just a thick layer of something like clay and flesh over a metal frame, just like Iris was. 

Sebastian looked past Iris, into the room. Up in the center, coming down from the roof, was a large ventilation shaft, probably for all of the chemicals. If he was able to get up there, he could talk to Iris, try to talk him down, the same way that he had before. He’d have a decent layer between himself and the tendrils as well. 

“Can you get me up there?” Sebastian whispered as the doors closed again, blocking Iris from view. 

\---

They were talking, they were quiet but he could hear them. He had no problem with his hearing. He knew exactly where they were. He threw his tendrils again, knowing that he would strike true, knowing that this time, after he pierced, he would rip outward instead of back. Piercing wasn’t enough. He would tear. 

The tendrils that made it through the barrier hit the door though and bounced off. They weren’t strong enough to push through. He was trapped once more. 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to bellow. He had been so close. He had felt blood on him and he was hungry for more but now he couldn’t reach it and he was alone once more. He had barely done anything. He had failed, just as much as he had before. 

\---

“Oooooooh?” 

“Into the vents? I have an idea.”

“Ah!” she released him from her own tendrils and Sebastian was surprised to find that none of them had pierced his skin. She had wrapped them around his clothes instead and, even then, she had barely poked through any of it. He hadn’t expected her to have the ability to be gentle. 

She led him back down the hall, back the way they had come, and now that Sebastian was paying attention to it, he could see the duct in the ceiling. Obscura stopped where it branched off, going further down the hall, towards the elevator, in one direction, and turning to the door before them on the other. 

Sebastian was expecting something terrible on the other side of the door, but when he opened it, he was pleased to find that it was just a bathroom. There was a terrible spray of blood on the marble tile and all of the mirrors had been shattered, the pieces left in disarray on the floor, but it was still a bathroom and there were no body parts, so that was a plus. 

Obscura followed him inside, squeezing to get through the doorway. In the middle of the ceiling was the vent and she jabbed at it with one of her tendrils before moaning at it. This time, when she lowered her head, Sebastian had no qualms with climbing onto it and she lifted him up to the vent. It wasn’t terrible wide but he could get his shoulders through on a squeeze. 

\---

Whatever was left on the counters fells to the floor. The metal of the table, as ruined as it was, was thrown across the room. He was destroying everything in his frustration, he would destroy more. This was just the beginning. 

They would come back. Whatever had brought Obscura and that man, that Sebastian, to him in the first place, it would bring them back. He would be ready. He would stay in this enraged state. 

\---

He took out the knife again, using it this time like a screwdriver to get the grate off and toss it to the side. Obscura turned towards the noise but the rest of her stayed perfectly still. Sebastian was able to pull himself up and in, exhaling to get himself as small as possible. He missed his younger days, when he was just a bit thinner, when this wouldn’t have been quite as much of a struggle. It didn’t widen out when he was fully inside of it, his shoulders pressed on either side. He sighed, starting to move. He hadn’t gone this far to stop now. 

“Ah! AH?” Obscura called out after him. 

“I’m sorry,” he called back, though he wasn’t sure if she could hear him and he could hardly hear himself as the words echoed, magnified, in the narrow space. “I have to do this part alone. Thank you, Obscura, for getting me this far!”

“Oooooooh?” she did hear him and when she moaned there was nothing sexual in it, more of a deep sadness. 

“I know, I know,” Sebastian didn’t but he could assume. “I’m going to get him out of there, I’m going to take care of this.”

She didn’t respond then and he was left alone to continue on his path. It wasn’t hard to find his way, having followed the path with his eyes beforehand. He dragged himself through the shaft, trying to think of what he could do to get through to Iris, how he could help. He knew what he’d done before, it was just coming up with the words now, and he didn’t know if he would be helping, or if he was just going to get himself killed.

\---

There was something close but he couldn’t tell where. It had started with a voice, Sebastian’s voice, traveling through the air, but he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. It sounded like it was in the air, in the ceiling, but it was echoing oddly. He wasn’t close by. He could hear Obscura too but she was even quieter, even further away. 

And then he could hear banging, flesh against metal. Sebastian was getting closer, still in the ceiling somewhere. He was coming without protection, without her. He would be far easier this way. 

\---

He hadn’t seen Stefano yet. That fact alone had him worried. He could be anywhere, could be doing anything. Sebastian couldn’t see anything from where he was, couldn’t even guess what that madman was up to. He was going to have to take care of him eventually. 

He made it to the dark room and for a moment, he just watched. The creature was shuffling around the room, his tendrils stretched out to reach all of the walls, to feel the space around him. He was silent as he moved, jerky in his movements, and those tendrils inched along the walls to fill all of the crannies to feel where everything was. He was at least nine feet tall like this and, if Sebastian were able to reach through the grate he would have been able to touch him. He looked like some terrible dark spider amidst a slick and dark web. 

“Iris?” Sebastian asked, trying to keep his voice down, trying to stay calm and relaxed. 

\---

There it was, the sound, the man, his prey. He was above him, like a fly, easy and fat and slow. He wasn’t made to be up above like that. 

\---

The monster spun, some of the tendrils tearing off of their holds to hurl whatever they held at Sebastian and the vent shook, the sound ricocheting and loud, so terribly loud, that Sebastian had to cover his ears. When it was clear that Iris had done no damage those tendrils sped towards the grate and Sebastian had to back away, fast, before they hit the grate, a few of them getting through to pierce at the aluminum ceiling. He was going to have to stay back, make his voice carry. He could see a dark smear of his own blood on the metal. 

“Iris, I know you’re scared, I know you’re hurting, but it’s me, it’s Sebastian,” he tried again, noticed that he was talking too loudly, too fast, and slowing down, trying to get the fear out of his voice. Again those tendrils slammed against the vent but they were thinner now, Iris adapting to the small gaps in the grate. He still didn’t know just how much he was missing though. “I promised you I’d come back, didn’t I? I promised you I’d get you out. That’s what I’m here to do. Just, I need you to listen to my voice, to calm down. Can you do that for me?”

\---

He was talking to him! He was pretending that he wasn’t afraid. He was pretending that he wasn’t weak. Iris would show him his folly. He would show him just how outmatched he was. 

\---

Apparently he couldn’t, because he slammed those tendrils in again. Sebastian could feel the metal around him twist, could feel it get torn down from the ceiling. He was going to be crushed to death or he was going to be ripped out and killed. 

“I’m not leaving. I’m going to stay here until you can answer me, until you’re you again. I need you in this and I know you need me too. I’m going to stay here, as long as it takes, alright? There’s no use in trying, you can’t get rid of me.”

More slamming. He didn’t care. He started to talk. He didn’t pay attention to what he was talking about, he just started going, about old cases, about work, about what life was like before STEM ruined everything. He kept his voice calm, he ignored the growing pressure around his shoulders and the crick in his back. He tried not to jump when the tendrils shot through the grate, more surprised as they became less and less frequent. He was there and he was talking and, slowly, he was sure that Iris was going back to himself. 

\---

He was talking. He didn’t care about what Iris was doing. Slowly, Iris ran out of things to throw, aside from himself, and he realized, through the haze of rage, just how tired he was. He wanted to keep going, he wanted to ruin, to wreak havoc, to be victorious against those that slighted him or would slight him. 

The anger was fading though in the slow and quiet way that Sebastian spoke. It was so calm. He paced around, covering his head with his hands. He didn’t want to hear about it, about people that he didn’t know. He could understand the words now, could understand that Sebastian was just talking for the sake of it. And they were stories. They were stories about people that he had helped. 

And he was helping Iris. He had put himself in danger to help Iris. 

He hunched down, curled in on himself, and he couldn’t block out the words, couldn’t stop hearing how Sebastian had stopped bad people in the past, how he had saved people, how he and another man, someone that Iris didn’t know, had kept the city safe. 

He didn’t know what it all meant. Surely, he was a bad person, and he needed to be stopped, in order to save people. He was everything that Sebastian stood against, but Sebastian was right there, telling him about how, even when he fell there was someone to pick him up, how he wanted to do that for Iris. 

All of the stories had a common factor and Iris wondered if Sebastian was to him what this Joseph had been to Sebastian. A helper, someone who spoke to him when he was out of control, someone that he trusted with all of himself. 

Iris wrapped his hands around himself, his knees up to his chest. He could feel broken glass beneath him, could feel it poking into him with bite but no poison, even as he could smell the mixing chemicals in the room. Sebastian just kept talking, until Iris felt like himself once more.


	5. Chapter 5

He watched as the long tendrils went lax, as they popped away from the walls and slid along the floor like weak slugs, or a gel sliding into a drain, going back to the center. It took a long time, for them to reattach, for them to mold into the skin, for them to reenter Iris’ body. He was lying on his side, curled in on himself, and he looked so small, so alone, on the floor of the dark room. 

Sebastian wanted to go down to him, to soothe him, but it felt strange. This man was a monster, and not one that he knew well. Iris seemed to do well with touch though, seemed to rely on it sometimes, and he was the only one around to help Iris in such a way. 

He pulled himself forward, out through the vent and dropped down to the floor below, letting his knees drop to break his momentum. It hurt a bit but it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t like what Iris had gone through. 

\---

He was there, he was in the room and Iris could hear him, could feel him as his landing hit the floor. He had attacked Sebastian, had tried to hurt him, he was sure. He didn’t know what all he’d done, he remembered turning and he remembered Stefano being afraid and he remembered Sebastian’s words, how gentle he’d been. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve that, nor what he had done to Sebastian, but he was in the room now. 

He didn’t want Sebastian there. He didn’t want anyone there. He wanted to be small. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to curl up so tightly that he stopped existing all together. 

He could smell this place, could smell himself, all of the things that had gone into him, clay and blood and flesh and death and formaldehyde. There was a bit of pain under him, where he was laying on some glass, but that didn’t matter. It would heal in a manner of moments. It was small, it didn’t matter. 

He just wanted to be the same. 

\---

“Iris?” he asked, taking a step closer, waiting for his response. 

He got on his knees, touching the back of Iris’ head and he jolted, shivering, but remained where he was on the floor. “Hey, are you okay?”

Iris thought on that, where he was, inhaling sharply through his nose. “D.id. I…. hurd. you?” he asked, his voice quiet, almost impossible to hear, all slurred and broken, even more than usual. 

\---

He couldn’t cry, he didn’t have tear ducts anymore. It hadn’t stopped him from trying before and it didn’t stop the painful squeezing of his throat, the filled sensation in his head, the desire to wail and sob. 

When Sebastian touched him he jolted. He didn’t know he was so close. He wanted to be touched but it felt strange, wrong. In this place it felt like the soft fingers would grip and pull him back, would force something against him, into him. He couldn’t stop but imaging what Sebastian would make of him in this place. 

Not even his hair was his own. He wondered how many of his thoughts, of his memories, he could even claim. 

He had to ask, he had to know what he had done. Because when he was the monster he couldn’t remember. He just knew the beginning and the end. Everything in between was just feeling, raw emotion, and he didn’t even have sight to go by now. He couldn’t see what he had done. 

\---

Sebastian’s hand stroked and there was so much tension in Iris’ shoulders, he could see it, every time his fingers made contact, Iris shook a bit more, was a little bit more panicked. He was trying to help. He stilled, not know what to do differently. “No. No, you didn’t. You tried but I was out of the way.”

A long whine, a high pitched rumble, broke through his throat and he turned, wrapping himself back up in that same position but facing Sebastian. He was tiny, so tight on himself. “Di.d I… hurd. him? Ste.fa.no? Izzzzhe. al.right?”

\---

He wouldn’t stop touching him. He could only imagine his hair coming away in clumps in Sebastian’s hands, his body falling apart because it was never supposed to be put together like it was. He felt sick under Sebastian’s hands, no matter how caring they were. 

He cared about Sebastian, he wanted him to be safe. None of that mattered, not in comparison to Stefano though. If he’d hurt Stefano, he didn’t know what that would mean for him, what that would do to him. He had to know. He had to be sure. 

Stefano was more than his creator, more than the man who had taught him how to see and feel and create. He didn’t have a word for what Stefano was to him but it was important and it was a feeling that overtook him at times, made him want more than he had. It was a feeling that ached and made him nervous at times and made him so desperate to please and others. If he’d hurt him, he knew that those feelings would never amount to anything and that Stefano would be done with him indefinitely. 

He wondered if Stefano would see him unmade. 

\---

Sebastian wanted to scoff, to roll his eyes, but he didn’t. Iris sounded completely wrecked. He didn’t understand why he cared so much for Stefano, it didn’t seem like the care was returned in any way, but it was clear that Iris did care. Sebastian had seen a lot of victims in his time and so many of them would defend those that hurt them until the end. Sebastian’s hand went to Iris’ face and that was even worse, he jumped and pulled away, hiding his face behind his hands.

“I don’t know,” Sebastian admitted. “I didn’t see him.”

“Dint. See,” Iris repeated, “Din. See. I cint. Seva.shun. Sev. Seb. Seba.zin. Cint see. Ste.fa.no. Took my. He took…”

\---

He hated it. He hated his face, what had become of it and now Sebastian was trying to touch it. He was going to know. He was going to see. Underneath the ooze there was framework and little else. It was just a grid work of metal, forcing his features to take shape. He didn’t want him to see it. 

He didn’t want him to see the new holes, the ones that had come from his eyes being taken from his skull. They were garish and obvious. There was ooze but there was no way that there was enough of it to hide the damage. 

When he spoke, he knew that it was hidden, that it was muffled by his hands, but he didn’t care. He wanted to say it, he needed to say it. He hated how much he tripped over his words. He had to know if he hurt anyone but he couldn’t get through the words. 

He wanted to say Sebastian’s name. He didn’t know why that was so important to him. It was such a difficult name. He couldn’t get it out through his ruined throat. 

\---

This time Sebastian did touch him, taking him by the arms and lifting him, pulling him against his chest so that he could wrap his arms around Iris and just, keep him there, let him relax, be supported. He could feel Iris shift, panic as he didn’t know what was happening at first and then a slow relaxing, like a long sigh, and he rested his head against Sebastian’s shoulder, just breathing, trying to stop the way that his chest was thrumming. 

“It’s okay,” he promised, running his hand down Iris’ spine. “It’s okay.”

“I cud see. He. gave me. Eyes.” Iris tries to explain. “Cudnt. see. Bevor… b-b-bline.”

“I know,” Sebastian sighed, “Is there anything we could do?”

Iris shivered against him, not answering, not having an answer. Sebastian had seen his eyes get pulled out, he wondered if they could be put back in, just as easily. His body didn’t work like a normal person’s, he had been changed so much for Stefano’s vision, whatever that was, and he could put himself back together in ways that Sebastian would never be able to. 

“Come on,” he said, “we should go. I don’t want to be in this place anymore.”

Iris nodded. “Hurss. Here.”

\---

In Sebastian’s arms it didn’t hurt. He’s been afraid of it, pulled up against the man’s chest, but he was so warm and he smelled like gunpowder and sweat and coffee and, oddly enough, safety. If he buried his face deep enough he wouldn’t smell the rest of the room. 

He breathed, trying to steady himself. He had to be strong, like Sebastian was. He had done so much for Iris already. He wanted to be able to do something back.

Sebastian already knew about his sight, how Stefano had made it possible, but he couldn’t stop himself from explaining it again, hoping that Sebastian had some answer, some power, another way to give him what he needed. The only thing that he had seen from Sebastian that wasn’t exactly human was in his perseverance and in how much he cared. 

When Sebastian suggested that they leave he couldn’t have been more relieved. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to think about the table that was so close by, he didn’t want to smell the chemicals. 

\---

Sebastian nodded and he knew that Iris knew it, since his cheek was rested against Iris’ scalp. He pulled them both to their feet and Iris leaned heavily on him, one hand extended. His other was still over his face, as if he was ashamed of it. Sebastian didn’t ask him about it, it was fine. It didn’t matter. He kept that hand out as Sebastian led him towards one of the doors, dragging his feet, making sure he wasn’t going to trip one of the millions of things that had fallen onto the floor. 

Sebastian stopped, a few feet away from one of the barricades, and he stood in front of Iris, holding onto his biceps and squeezing gently. “Would you be alright on your own for a moment? I have to clear some stuff away from the door.”

Iris nodded and he was released, standing there almost too still as Sebastian went to work. He grabbed the shelving unit on one side and shoved it up and out of the way, more of the chemicals and equipment sliding off to shatter on the floor. They were both wearing shoes, but Iris’ soles were thin and he was certain that some of that broken glass would poke through. Looking back he could see that Iris was frazzled, looking around for the cause of the sound. 

\---

He didn’t like it. He didn’t want Sebastian to let go of him. The warmth lingered on his cold skin just for a few moments before it faded and he was alone. He didn’t know the room very well, hadn’t learned it blind. If he had time to touch it, to walk around, without sight, he would have been perfectly fine. He was used to learning places by feel and distance. He’d been able to see in here though, off and on. 

He could hear the movement of metal and it sounded like the groaning of rebar being fused into his aching and exposed bones. He could hear the shattering of glass, like those he had knocked aside as he’d broken himself free of Stefano’s hold. He could smell more chemicals, the ones that Stefano used for his photographs, the ones that we used to keep the meat in his body from spoiling. He thought that he was going to be sick. He didn’t know if he could be, not when there was nothing in his stomach. 

He wanted Sebastian to touch him. He had a general idea of where he was, but he couldn’t be certain. It made him worry. He knew that Sebastian was close and that he wasn’t going to leave him and that he would help, that all he wanted was to help, but there was still this concern that Sebastian would grow tired of him. That he wanted someone stronger, who could be more of use to him, and that, eventually, he would be left behind. 

\---

Sebastian made his way back to Iris, glass clinking underfoot. Iris wasn’t surprised when he touched him next. “The floor is dangerous, can I carry you?”

“Heavy,” was Iris’ only complaint. 

“Yeah, I know. I can handle it. I’ll set you down outside, alright?”

Iris nodded and put out his hand, taking it away from his face. The ooze was almost green in places. He found Sebastian’s shoulder though and wrapped his arm around his back, drawing close. Sebastian put his arms on Iris’ back and he half jumped into Sebastian’s arms, pulling himself close to his chest once more. 

\---

He didn’t need to guess where Sebastian was when he stepped through the broken glass, he could hear him, and feeling his skin against his shoulder, his heat permeating his jacket, there was nothing that he wanted more than to feel him wrapped around him again. It was always when he was released that he realized just how cold his body really was. 

When Sebastian offered to carry him he knew that it was because he was blind, that he was defenseless, but he didn’t care. He wanted Sebastian to carry him. He was so tired. Being that thing, it always exhausted him. He couldn’t control it and it stretched the materials of his body, forced the rebar to dislocate, and when he came back together it all had to slot back into place. He wanted to sleep and, more than that, he wanted to be held and cherished. 

Stefano had been the only one to have done that before, when he was fresh and beautiful, when he wasn’t such a disappointment. 

\---

It was easy to get to the door and through it, easier to hold onto Iris and feel him breathing, much more calm than he had been before. If it weren’t for his weight Sebastian would have wanted to keep carrying him. He was cold but it had been so long since he’d gotten to hold someone. He’d missed it. 

Still, he did as promised and released Iris on the other side. He knew that Iris had powers but now he wondered if one of them was mind reading, because he stayed close against him, his arm leaving his shoulder to wrap around his waist instead. It let him put his arm around Iris’ shoulders and it was a bit awkward, but together they started their way to the elevator. 

\---

He didn’t want to be set down, he wanted to rest his head on Sebastian’s chest and fall asleep. Having the man hold him was like being cradled in a blanket and it made him feel more like a child than he remembered being one, safe and warm and drowsy. He knew that he couldn’t be carried much, because of his weight, but he still wanted it. 

Even when Sebastian let go of him he clung on, getting close, trying to keep that warmth. He half expected Sebastian to push him away, just hold onto him enough to keep him from falling, but Sebastian seemed to be as against releasing him as he was against being released. 

It was only when they started down the hall, Sebastian pushing things out of the way, did Iris realize that there was something wrong. Sebastian had been desperate to find his daughter and Iris had sacrificed himself to buy Sebastian time to go find her. Only now he was alone. The girl was nowhere around. 

Iris gulped and his mind raced. Sebastian had said he would come back for him, but he had thought that Lily would be in tow. She was his highest priority. Iris shouldn’t have mattered at all in comparison. Something must have gone wrong. 

\---

“Why did. You. come bak...?” Iris asked. “What about. Li.ly?”

That was the thing that he needed Iris for. That was all that was supposed to matter. He’d wasted so much time, Lily could be long gone by now, Stefano having taken her somewhere else. He shuddered, wondering how much he had failed. 

“The theatre, it’s gone. I got down there and the floor was a mess, just a bit pit. I couldn’t search for Lily. I couldn’t even start.”

“You. came back. fr me.”

“Yeah, well, I said I-

\---

He would recognize the sound of those steps anywhere, and it was only made easier by the fact that he couldn’t see. All of his senses were in overdrive, trying to make up for his sight, and it was the way that it had always been, before Stefano had given him sight. Stefano’s shoes were patent leather, the same as his own, with a slight heel and a thin soles, the sound of them against the tile was clear and obvious. Then they would vanish and there would be the sound of his stepping through space and the footsteps would continue. 

He was walking up behind them. He thought that he was being quiet. He was succeeding in Sebastian’s case. He had no idea that they were in any danger. 

\---

“Shhh!” Iris shoved a hand against Sebastian’s chin, corrected, and put it over his mouth. His head was turning and Sebastian could see movement under all of his hair. He couldn’t see the holes in his face from under the ooze and hair but he could see some motion all the same. He was trying to look around. Sebastian joined him but he didn’t see anything and he realized, slowly, that Obscura was gone as well. “He’s coming.”

Sebastian’s grip tightened and he walked faster, moving at a half job, Iris stumbling but keeping up well enough. It didn’t matter though, because Stefano could teleport and he was coming up behind them. Iris could hear him coming far before Sebastian could but when he was only a few feet behind Sebastian could hear him as well. He started to sprint and Iris called out, almost tripping, as he picked up the pace. 

\---

It didn’t matter. Sebastian was moving faster, he was struggling to keep up, unsure of where they were going or what was in his path. He clung to Sebastian. It didn’t matter. This was Stefano’s space. This was where he had absolute power. If Stefano wanted them, he would have them. 

Sebastian started to run and Iris had to stop from calling out, his feet in the way of his feet, Sebastian’s feet in the way of that. Sebastian wasn’t letting him go though, was helping him keep his footing, and no matter how he stumbled his fall couldn’t reach the floor. He had to keep moving.

He knew that it was useless but he couldn’t stop Sebastian even if he wanted to. 

\---

But Stefano was ahead of them, so close, his knife against Sebastian’s throat as he stepped out of a plume of blue smoke in front of him. 

“How dare you?” Stefano growled and Sebastian was forced to take a step back, but he moved his hand, putting it in front of Iris and scooting him back further. Sebastian wasn’t going to let Stefano hurt him again, not if he could help it. “You have adulterated my work! You have you have created a mockery out of it! I demand to know how, and why you have turned it into such an aberration!”

\---

It. It, it, it, it. He knew that he was Stefano’s work, he knew that he was Stefano’s property, he had given himself to him, he had known what he was doing, to some extent, when he entered this contract. But now Stefano was speaking about him like he was something indecent, like he was disgusting. 

He was as aberration. He had known this. He had become it himself. He had burned himself, had ruined everything and that was so vile, so disgusting, that he had locked himself away. He couldn’t stand the idea of what Stefano would think when he saw him. But he was repairable. 

It was the monster, which had come out of him in his pain and anger and in his desire to just stop existing that Stefano hated so much. He had become that himself. Sebastian had nothing to do with it. He was a mess and he had ruined himself more than even Stefano had known. He couldn’t let Sebastian take them blame for it. 

But he was quiet and broken and useless. He was a coward and there was nothing that he could do. Sebastian was protecting him, again. He was shaking under Stefano’s judgment. He deserved Stefano’s rage. He knew what would come though, if he accepted his punishment. It had happened before. His body wouldn’t allow Stefano to repair it. No matter how much he wanted to be corrected, to be beautiful, to be art, he had ruined his chance at that. 

\---

Iris was shaking behind him. He could feel it, in his hand against Iris’ wrist. He wasn’t afraid of Stefano, not as much as he should have been, not with how Iris was reacting. 

“What have I done? Look at him!” Sebastian’s growl was more guttural than Stefano’s his voice louder. “Look at what you turned him into!”

“I didn’t make him into a mindless beast!” Stefano’s mouth was a gash, his teeth grit together, his veins red and pulsing as they spread out from under his hair. He punctuated his sentence with a push, the blade nicking Sebastian’s throat, just enough to draw blood. 

\---

Blood. He knew the smell so well. He knew his own, as well as what became his as Stefano had pumped it into him so that he wouldn’t run out in his creation. He knew it so well that he could tell the difference between it and the blood of Stefano’s art. He could smell the blood fill the air as Stefano hurt Sebastian. 

He could feel the tightening of Sebastian’s hand on his wrist. It was minor, hardly anything. But Iris knew that he was hurt. 

He needed Stefano’s approval, he needed to be worthy of him, but the fact that he was hurting Sebastian, someone who had done nothing but show him kindness, tore into him. Stefano couldn’t do that. He wasn’t allowed. Iris didn’t want it happening ever again. 

\---

The monster, that must have been what he meant. He took another step back but then there was a grip on him, a slithering snake-like grip, and he was being yanked back, pulling behind Iris. He balked, not understanding, but Iris was taking a shaky step forward and his hands were fists at his sides, the tendrils of his body agitated and swirling around him. He was still human, but Sebastian wasn’t sure how much. 

“Leeeve. Him!” Iris barked, and it was almost as loud as actual words. “I’m. how I am. Now. Because of. What. You made. Me!” One of the tendrils snapped out and hit Stefano in the wrist, knocking the knife out of his hand. He slid forward, fast, and he couldn’t see, but he knew Stefano well, knew his body, knew his reactions, so well that he didn’t need to. His hand was over sized, dripping, as he grabbed the bit of hair that Stefano hid his face with and wrenched it to the side. “You. Will not. Hurt. Seb.as.shun!”

Sebastian stood stock still. He wasn’t expecting this. He was pretty sure that Iris hadn’t been expecting it either. He was breathing hard, trying to control himself. He looked exhausted. He shouldn’t of had to protect Sebastian. 

\---

He couldn’t believe it. He was doing it and he was in control of himself and he was fighting Stefano. He was doing what he was never supposed to do. He had to be in between them, he had to protect Sebastian, but he had never thought that he would act like this, that he would be the aberration that Stefano had just claimed him to be. 

He was changing, he could see it, but he was still in control. He was so angry that Stefano would hurt Sebastian. 

He knew that he had ruined it, any chance that he had to be worthy of Stefano’s care. He would never be fixed. He would never see. He would be blind and broken forever and it was all his fault. He would never feel Stefano’s adoration, never create art, never receive any form of praise again and it was all his fault. 

\---

Sebastian still had a lot of guns on him and he didn’t have any ammo, but Stefano didn’t know that. He drew one of them anyway, aimed it at Stefano over Iris’ shoulder. 

“We’re done with this,” Sebastian said, coldly, “and we’re done with you. I’m sure you know what we want and I’m sure what we’re willing to do to get it.”

Stefano looked shaken but he covered it well, rolling his wrist and cocking his head to give them both a cold smile. He was like a snake, cold blooded and filled with venom, but he was more spine than anything else. “And if I told you I didn’t have the core, what would you do?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

Iris buckled, his courage starting to flag. He was strong, Sebastian had no doubt of that, and he could hold his own, but he’d never expected that Iris would do so much to defend himself, to defend Sebastian more, especially after all he’d been through, how desperate he was for Stefano’s approval. He wouldn’t be getting it after his. 

“Well I don’t, and I do know what you want, Iris, and I am willing to give it to you.” He put his hand on Iris’ cheek, under the ooze and Iris went frigid, all of the tendrils coming off of him stilling. He took a step forward and so did Sebastian, keeping him in his line of sight, the gun not enough of a deterrent. “You want me to make you worthy.” 

\---

He was touching him and his hand, under that leather, was warm and caring and careful. If Iris had eyes he would have closed them. He had thought that he had lost all hope but with Stefano’s words, he wondered if he was as lost as he thought. Stefano was offering him another chance. 

He wanted it, so badly, and he leaned into Stefano’s touch, feeling all of his bravery fall to the side. He was good subservient, he was good at pleasing. He wanted to do it, he wanted nothing more. Being good for Stefano, it was all that he could ever hope to be. 

He would do anything for it. He felt Stefano’s thumb trace over the corner of his lips, felt it under the ooze, against his frame, he wanted to open his mouth. He wanted to do whatever Stefano asked of him. 

Sebastian was right there though. He wanted Sebastian safe. Sebastian had been so kind. There were things that Stefano could give him that Sebastian could never imagine. They were things that Sebastian would never need. 

\---

Sebastian pulled the trigger when Stefano pulled Iris close, pressed his lips to his, and kissed him, deeply, ignoring the ooze on his face even as it stiffened and turned red. There were no bullets but his gun clicked and his threat was revealed as a bluff. Iris didn’t move, didn’t fight Stefano, opening his mouth to let the man deepen the kiss, to let him in, even though he did not return it. Sebastian watched, detached, unable to do anything, as he watched Stefano press himself up against Iris, as his hand went from touching to guiding, as his other arm wrapped around Iris’ waist to cling to him like a lover. It was sick, it was wrong, and Sebastian felt something in his chest harden. 

\---

Kissed. Stefano was kissing him and his mouth was open and he wanted to kiss him back, to take him in. There was a whine in his throat, in his mouth but it was so tight, so quiet, that he knew no one could hear it. He heard the click of Sebastian’s gun but he didn’t care. 

He had that feeling in his stomach, in his chest, and now he knew what it was. It was love, or a shadow of it, but it felt twisted and wrong. He wanted this. He wanted Stefano. He wanted Stefano to push him against a wall and kiss him breathless, he wanted Stefano’s hands on him and in him, fixing everything that Iris had broken. He wanted to be made whole and right now it felt like Stefano could do that with his mouth alone. 

But part of him felt sick at the same time, like he was using himself, treating his mouth as payment for something more, for the ache in his chest to be healed. And Sebastian was right there, watching, and part of him wanted these lips to belong to Sebastian, who didn’t see him as broken and less as he was.

He didn’t kiss Stefano back. His body knew how, was ready for it, but part of him held back. Part of him wanted this to stop. He felt like he wanted to melt away into nothingness or into Stefano or into oblivion. 

\---

“Get off of him,” Sebastian spat, getting closer. He wasn’t sure if Stefano didn’t hear him or didn’t care, because he didn’t move. Sebastian replaced his gun with his knife, reaching out and taking Stefano by the shoulder. “I said, get off of him!”

He shoved the knife down but there was nothing in his hand but smoke. Stefano was a few feet away, a playful smile on his lips, arms crossed. “Don’t tell me you have a little crush? Perhaps you will grow to appreciate my art after all.”

Iris slumped against him, his shoulder against Sebastian’s. His lip was quivering. His ooze and his nose bright red. Sebastian wrapped an arm around him. “That’s not it!” Sebastian didn’t take his eyes off of Stefano. “Just let him see again and then leave him alone!” 

Sebastian wrapped around him and all of the warmth he had felt from Stefano was gone, replaced with a cold hard darkness. There had been desire in that kiss, there had been a deal in it, but it was like kissing the devil. He didn’t know what he had to sell to get it again. 

Sebastian’s arm around him was warm and supportive, it was something that Stefano had never given him. And he was shaking, blushing, part of him so ashamed that Sebastian had seen him like that. He wondered if Sebastian would ever find him worthy of a kiss, and if he could compare the two. He wondered if such a thing would make him feel more whole than what Stefano could do. 

“Leave him alone?” Stefano mused on that, the smile twisting up on one side but not fading. “I don’t think that’s what he wants.”

Another flash though and Stefano was gone, just leaving a plume of smoke in his wake. 

\---

He turned to Sebastian, ears still pricked, trying to hear for Stefano in the distance. He couldn’t hear him, he must have been far away. He could feel Sebastian though, could hear his heartbeat, and he wanted to feel it more. He wanted to be pressed so much tighter than he had been so far. 

“Are you alright?” Sebastian asked, running a hand down his arm. 

Iris shook his head. He didn’t know what he was. He wanted to clear his head. He didn’t know if his head could be clear. “W.we shud… we shud go.”

Sebastian’s thumb was rubbing down his arm, he could feel it, through his jacket. “Where?”

“Don. Away. Plese, Seb.as.tun. Please, can we be. Away?”

Sebastian nodded, his chin bumping Iris’ scalp. The only problem was that he didn’t know where away would be. He kept himself as close to Sebastian as he could as they moved to the elevator. 

His lips felt bruised.


End file.
